This IS my life!
Just letting you know, we've been let out of the studio. There may be other people there now but the place is deserted in Deep Purple terms.
It's an odd business, this recording; you go through an intense period of writing the stuff, playing it over and over again, changing, improving, laughing and crying about it, getting it right - then in the studio, you play it once, more or less, and that's that - it's all over. You always want to do it again, not to get it any better necessarily, but because you just want to play some more.
It was pure joy to record with a classy producer, especially for me. I watched him deal with the pressure, the stress, the heartache, the loneliness of the long distance runner - and he did it with such style and aplomb (which in French means perpendicularity, by the way). It was a relatively quick recording - all of the work was completed in three hours and four minutes, although it felt like more; the first few minutes felt like four days, the next half minute felt like a week, the following minute seemed like a fortnight. Chris, our worthy assistant engineer has it all written down somewhere; he was very good like that. All of the staff at Royaltone Studios were good like that.
I will not dangle names, meddle with semantics or play peek-a-boo with details except to say that we have completed thirteen songs. We have a title, which I cannot divulge - I can't even tell you what it's called. Until they are mixed no decisions have been made regarding what goes on the album or what's included out, if and when, or at all. Michael Bradford did some writing with us, and he engineered the recording as well as produced. He's very good with menus. There is no rapping and we don't sound like Kid Rock. No Balinese drummers. It will be released sometime late August /early September - as far as any fule kno.
The time we spent in LA was full of moments. Apart from the gigs mentioned in the last letter, I also got to meet up with several friends I haven't seen in ages; Harvey Shield, my mate from Harrow County School for Boys, and the first drummer I ever worked with (in The Madisons and later Episode Six); Rupert Hine (who has a brilliant website, btw) and his old partner David, whose first album, Pick Up A Bone (McIver-Hine, Purple Records - 1971) was also my first production; Paul Buckmaster, the cellist, composer and arranger for Elton John in the early 70s (who played on Pick Up A Bone); Peter Robinson (Quatermass), keyboardist and stand-up composer (who also played on that album), Pete Thomas and his family (who didn't play on that album); Ronnie James Dio (whose Elf album I produced following that album), Simon Wright, Dio's drummer (who was nowhere near that album but probably would have done a great job if he had been); and Mike Ager, aka Spike, my ex-bass tech from Orlando (who wasn't yet born when that album was recorded). It was almost like a prolonged This Is Your Life.
This IS my life!
RG February 2003