WELL ABOVE AVERAGE : The Pete Tattersall Interview

Nick R Thomas writes:

We interviewed Cathy Redfearn, former Strawberry Studios secretary for the programme and, if I remember correctly, she gave us the number for Pete Tattersall, co-founder of Strawberry.

I sent Sonia the questions to ask him and he was a great interviewee – chatty, enthusiastic and funny. He was full of fond memories of the heyday of Strawberry Studios and 10cc and obviously had great affection for all the band members.

Sonia did a brilliant job of editing his detailed explanation of the recording of I’m Not In Love to fit neatly into the part of the documentary where we played the record. Here’s the full, unedited version.

We very much enjoyed Pete’s hilarious anecdotes about Kev and Lol’s practical jokes. It was a real shame there wasn’t time to include them on the programme so it’s great to have the opportunity to post these on the Fan Club site.

ON FIRST MEETING ERIC…

I first met Eric, first of all, when we had a little studio in Stockport. Eric was in the Mindbenders then and Graham used to come into the studio to cut discs for his songwriting. Eric and I started Strawberry Studios then we moved to these new premises which I think was late 68, early 69 and then Graham joined in so it was just Eric, Graham and myself when we called it Strawberry Studios. The reason why we called it Strawberry studios was that the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” was Eric’s favourite song, so we thought that was quite a good advertising slogan – Strawberry Studios Forever – didn’t quite go forever but it went a long time.

ON HOW BASIC THE ORIGINAL INTER-CITY STUDIO WAS…

Yes it was. The studio area in fact we had lined with egg-boxes because we thought that we couldn’t really afford acoustic tiles and that was the nearest thing. It was very basic but believe it or not we did some quite good things in there. We even had a, we could get up to a 15 piece band in it and that was actually the original Syd Lawrence Orchestra we had in there, which was quite interesting. But then we had to move because the studio was next to a listed building and we were classed as a fire hazard, so, weird really, but anyway we had to move.

ON KASENATZ KATZ…

That was a deal done, it was basically I think it all came through Graham. I can’t really remember all the ins-and-outs of the deal but there was a lot of money put up to make lots of demo’s and two session musicians, well, friends of Eric, Kev and Lol, they joined in and they were doing all the sessions and that’s really how 10cc formed - just playing together on sessions but actually Kevin and Lol and Eric did of course, did a track called Hotlegs between that, Neanderthal Man, sorry, a group called Hotlegs and that was fairly successful, the second single didn’t do anything and then 10cc really was formed just after that.

ON THE ORIGINS OF THE NAME 10CC…

There’s a lot of strange things going about how that name, Jonathan King claims that he thought it up, I can’t really remember. There were lots of names bandied around, I think it was a joint thing, it juts happened. The idea of 10cc, I can’t really say this on radio but it was either a very small motorbike or it was the heroin, according to Jonathan King, it was the overdose of a heroin addict. But there was a third 10cc but I can’t really say what that was.

ON THAT OTHER STORY ABOUT THE NAME…

It’s very rude, it’s very rude. Apparently 10cc’s is supposed to be the normal amount of ejaculation from a man – how about that, and that was one of the facts. Well, yeah, well, depends how big you are but it was those three things that were always bandied about, but really it was just a small motorbike, that’s what we said in the end.

ON “SPACE HYMNS” BY RAMASES…

How did it come about? I think it was Harvey Lisberg got that together, and it was on Phonogram, if I can remember the real name. He came from Yorkshire, ah, it’s coming back to me. I think he owned a double glazing or a window company, something like that, and he sold it all. And he decided he was the reincarnation of Ramases the, I can’t remember, the first, second or third, anyway and Egyptian god and his wife was Sel, that’s it and they had all these weird and wonderful songs, that was it. It was very, very strange, they used to sit in the studio discussing life and philosophy for hours before they actually played a note which was great for us because we were charging by the hour. He could stay and talk all day as far as I was concerned. But I don’t think it actually did a lot, that album. Do you remember the cover? Oh, well, if you actually, that cover, that church is actually in Stockport on the way to Buxton. I think it’s St George’s and the spire is quite unusual, if you look at it from different angles. That’s where they got the idea from, it looks a bit like a rocket, the side things that come out of it.

ON STRAWBERRY SOUTH…

What happened was the studio in Stockport was extremely busy, it got more and more successful so they built a studio in an old cinema in Dorking and it was called Strawberry South. That was quite an, it was a really nice studio, quite big and that lasted, I can’t remember how long it actually ran for but it was a really nice studio. And they mainly did a lot of the recordings down there but they still did them at Strawberry North. The thing with 10cc, it was very experimental, you could take a whole day just getting one sort of sound. It could take a long time so it makes sense to have their own studio.

ON RECORDING “I’M NOT IN LOVE”…

Well, first off, I’m Not In Love to record it took about a week. The first tracks that were laid down were a semi-acoustic guitar, electric guitar, a semi-acoustic electric guitar and a moog bass, just a basic rhythm so they got they structure of the song. Now bear in mind this song was an album track, it wasn’t initially meant as a single and then they had this idea of doing the voices to become an instrument. So let’s say for example there’s four of them singing and you’ve got 5 notes in a chord, simplicity say you’ve got A,B,C,D and E. So the four would sing note A, just a continual “as long as they can hold their breath” sort of Aaah A then that would be one track of the multi-track then wind back and do note B & C until they got they whole 5 notes of the chord. Then that chord, these notes which were now on 5 tracks were mixed down to stereo and then transferred back up to the multi-track on a couple of tracks so you had the first note of the whole chord then they’d move onto the next chord and the next chord. So eventually I think we did 364 tracks because I remember going down to London on the train, and I think it was Lol and I were sat working out how many overdubs had been done, on a sheet of paper, we got about 364 so that basically their voices built up all the chords of the song. They ended up if I remember rightly by going back and forth to stereo and to make the chord last, what we did was we recorded it onto tape, we made a loop. So you just got this long loop which we ran round the tape machines. In fact some of the loops of some chords got so long that they were running from one stereo machine to another, right around the control room and we were tensioning them with holding screwdrivers against the loop of tape and the top of a cymbal stand to try and get the tension right. The idea to do that was so that you didn’t hear the glitch in the loop, if you made a loop tape of something you invariably got a little glitch in it. Then this continual note sound was mixed back into the multi-track. Eventually there was just 6 tracks of voices and all the bit of the song where it goes “Bah bah bah bah” there wasn’t automated mixing consoles then so they were literally brought up manually, the faders, up down up down, little bits of masking tape were put on the faders for the levels that were wanted and so the basis of the song was done then, the voices making the backing track and the unusual effects then they put the lead vocal on and Cathy who did the “Big boys don’t cry” and that’s basically it. In the end I think it was quite a simple track to mix because I think eventually there was only something like maybe 12 tracks, yeah possibly 12, 13 tracks on the multi-track in the end. I hope that’s not got too technical, too complicated.

To give a good effect of this choral, if you think of the track where Eric’s getting into the chorus where he’s going “I’m not in love, I’m not in love”, behind it you can hear this strange sound which is actually voices going “Bah bah bah bah” – I’m not a very good singer actually – that’s just to give you the effect. It’s quite hard to explain but the idea of the voices was to be used as some unusual instrument that nobody at first would know what it was. So you’ve got that bit where they’re going “Bah bah bah bah” and then at the end of the song where it’s going, he’s singing at the very end of the song, he’s going “I’m not in love” and his voice is going higher and more echo-ey and you can hear this sound building up and it’s fairly high pitched. That again is voices gradually going “Aaaah” all the way up the scale. That was done by slowing the loop down and a varispeed taking it up so the varispeed was taking it progressively in tune, sort of.

ON HIS FAVOURITE 10cc TRACKS…

One of my favourites is the very first one, “Rubber Bullets” because I just think that is so clever, it was so tongue in cheek and you know the bass line “Duh duh duh duh duh dum dum” but there was something about that track, the whole concept of the song and the guitar riffs in it which were actually distorted guitar sounds. How that was done was basically turn the gain up on the channel, overloading it but it was, this sounds silly, but it was sort of clean distortion, you could still hear all the notes. It really cuts through. “Sand In My Face” and “Oh Effendi” and all those, the lot of them fabulous but “Rubber Bullets” sticks in my mind.

ON THE BAND’S STUDIO EXPERIMENTATION…

Well, at the very beginning at the studio, you’ve got to bear in mind that there wasn’t the technology that there is today so if you had an idea to make something like you wanted certain echoes, there wasn’t fancy reverberation unites and echo machines. All we had was E&T echo plates and very simple tape reverb’s so we used to experiment a lot, we used to make different sorts of echoes, we even used the lift-shaft at the studio with a speaker, mic’ at the top and a speaker at the bottom so there was a lot of experiments went on, to make up the sounds and the great thing we always used to be, 10cc and Strawberry, very proud of the drum sounds. It used to take a lot of time getting a really good drum sound, in other words, the basis of the track had to be nice and solid. So it was a great atmosphere because if anybody came up with a crazy idea, it would be tried. Some worked, some didn’t. Then when they started to get more famous and we’d got more equipment in, it was still experimental but things were a little easier. Sometimes they took the fun out of it and it got very serious, with deadlines on albums and all that. Of course it changed. People are bound to change when you get successful and famous. But not for the worse. We’re still great friends. I’ve not seen Eric for quite a long time but I’ve seen Graham fairly recently, and to me Graham hasn’t changed at all. He’s exactly the same, it’s weird. We saw each other probably six months ago and we were chatting and it could have been 10 years ago. It’s exactly the same and I’m sure Eric’s the same. Kev and Lol, I’ve not seen for a long time because they got very much involved with filming, so I’ve not seen them. I’d like to, but not seen them for quite a long time.

ON THEIR PRACTICAL JOKES AT STRAWBERRY…

Yeah, all sorts of silly things went on. It got about that Kev and Lol were very artistic, right, and they used to do these amazing drawings but there’s a few things stuck in my mind. I’ll tell you what, why they used to do these crazy things – it was really an outlet because you need to bear in mind they might have been working all day long and well into the night with a few tracks. It was just an outlet. We’d had this new pool table delivered and I was really proud of it as I’d done the deal to this one. The next day I walked down into the recreation area and this pool table was full of the most unimaginable mess – stale Chinese food, coffee spilt on it, cigarettes, it was horrendous and I just freaked out. I thought “oh god what have they been doing?” It turned out and you can imagine how long this must have taken, they actually got a piece of green baize, cut it exactly to the size of the table, very carefully laid it in, stuck it down and then out all this stuff on top. In actual fact they hadn’t ruined the table at all. I was freaking out about that. Anyway I saw the joke of it but then they started to out-do each other. But I think one of the best was our control room was built by a company called Westlake Audio and it was very advanced for it’s day. It was an American design and I was picking up the designer, it was all being done just to see it and we were doing some acoustic tests on it. I opened the door to the control room. It was a Saturday morning, walked in and it wasn’t there, it was just brick walls. I actually remember closing the door, saying I’d gone in the wrong room then thought I can’t have been in the wrong room, I opened it again and what they’d done, they got this building firm in and they made this framework to completely cover all the walls, which bear in mind they were all strange angles and the desk and they’d got this rock wallpaper covering it, just have taken them hours all through the night and it was just a joke that I’d walk in and think the control room had gone. Well, this guy from America, and Americans haven’t got a great sense of humour sometimes, he just couldn’t believe what was going on and i said “it’s only 10cc, they’re only having a laugh” and he just, I don’t think he’s forgotten it to this day because it took hours to take it all down.

ON THE BAND IN 1995…

Yeah, I mean, great that they’ve done another album, I know Graham was telling me about it on the phone and what I really want to see, I’d like to see them, especially Eric again and hopefully if they do tours I will definitely go on one of the shows but this album is as good as things they’ve done in the past. I just hope it’s a hit for them again because I’ve always, not only were 10cc great friends, great personal friends, we went through a lot together, with the building of the old studio, but they’re the most talented people, musicians I think, I dare say definitely since the Beatles and McCartney without a shadow of a doubt. Inventive, different songs, you never knew what was going to happen in the songs, brilliant recording artists and Eric is a very, very fine engineer. I wish them all luck and I wish I was back in the studio business

Okay?