The 6 photographs shown above are BBC
copyright
Photo 1: Rick with
Nick R. Thomas, Sonia Beldom, Eric and Graham.
Photo 2: Stood up
are Graham and Eric, then seated is Sonia's assistant,
Trudi, then Sonia, Dave Dade, and Nick to the rear.
Nick R. Thomas
explains : They were taken on the afternoon of Wednesday
15 February 1995 at the BBC Maida Vale Studios by David
Greame-Baker as publicity shots for the Well Above
Average documentary.
Eric, Graham and Rick turned up at 4pm. Eric was very ill
with the flu (I'd had the same thing myself a few days
earlier and it was NASTY!). The guys had done loads of
interviews already that day (a figure of 14 was mentioned
- surely not, even if they were all 5 minutes on local
radio by phone?)
They sat vamping and strumming away the basic rhythm of
The Things We Do For Love while Graeme snapped away. They
brought their own guitars in but the piano was hired by
the BBC at Eric or Philip Lisberg's request.
Playing the session took until 7pm. Eric's voice kept
breaking on I'm Not In Love because of the cough. Several
versions of some songs were recorded and they all lasted
the same length of time - to the second!
There's a group shot of a moment of great concentration
in the studio, all listening intently, was because the
first half of one recording of Dreadlock Holiday and the
second half of another were put together and Eric wanted
to find out if you could hear the join. You couldn't.
You see in the shot that I'm next to him. I remember at
one point turning and staring (he didn't notice - he was
too busy listening!) and thinking how incredible it was,
what an amazing privilege, not only to be 'in' on
something like this but to have actually instigated it.
The guy in the shot with the great ZZ Top beard is Dave
Dade, BBc session engineer.
I'm sure the guys would have loved to have gone home -
especially Eric - as they had the Lloyd's of London gig
the next day but they stayed and answered questions going
right back to the Mindbenders for over an hour and many
of the quotes were used (and credited) in Liam's
excellent book.
An amazing day and these photos bring it all back.
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