Nicely Out of Tune - 40 Years On
Part 1: Ray Jackson
Upstairs Downstairs
First off, while recording the album at Trident, during one late night session, I happened to slip upstairs to the coffee machine in the corridor outside the mixing suite. Some very nice sounds were leaking from the half closed door which had me intrigued. Who could this be I wondered?
I hung around for as long as I could trying not to be too conspicuous listening to what was going on. I hadn’t heard anything as good as this before in any studio and it came as a shock to me because compared to the sound we were making downstairs , this was in a different league. I had to tear myself away and retreat back to the main studio where we were recording NOOT.
It was a policy of the studio not to disclose who was using the other suites, particularly famous acts, but I found out from our tape op, that George Harrison was mixing his first solo offering upstairs which was to be the "All Things Must Pass" album. I later discovered that "What Is Life" was the track that they had been working on when I listened by the door. The album had been recorded entirely on sixteen track, a relatively new innovation and very expensive. George had also recruited the help of recording studio guru Phil Spector and some of the best session musicians around at the time.
The comparison in sound to our album was disappointing to say the least but then we were the new boys on the block, working on our first album on the less expensive eight track. "Nicely Out Of Tune" before its release, was already rendered technically inferior by advances in studio machinery and was not state of the art in recording terms, but the album had an innocence that helped it rise above this disadvantage. We had collected and recorded some great songs and played them with an unusual blend of instruments. It is still my favourite Lindisfarne album, for all its imperfections, and I still get pleasure from listening to it.
The Mexico Bar and Tommy Cooper
Trident Studios at St. Anne’s Court in deepest Soho was very close to the Mexico Bar on Wardour Street, an old fashioned coffee bar which served snacks and coffee from a Gaggia coffee machine. It was quite small and had only a few tables. One morning Alan and I desperate for some breakfast walked into the Mexico and were surprised to be greeted by none other than Tommy Cooper, who was probably still out from the night before. He was smartly dressed sitting at a table with a female companion on his arm. He spoke to us like he had known us for years. He had a propensity towards the drink so this may have had something to do with it. We were invited to sit with him and he asked us what we were up to. We told him our story and he listened with great interest, bought us a coffee before he left and wished us luck. He was a really pleasant bloke and Alan and I were not only in awe of this great comedian but very impressed by his attitude towards us. We discovered from the proprietor that he was a regular customer and we would often go back , in the hope that we would see him again, but sadly it was our one and only encounter.
Leslie Mandolin
My experience in the studio at the time of NOOT was very limited and apart from the few demo recordings we had made previously, I was basically unaware of some of the electronic wizardry that could be at your disposal to enhance the sound. During the mix down of Lady Eleanor, I remember John Anthony asking our engineer Robin Cable if he could make the mandolin sound bigger. To my surprise he diverted the signal from the mandolin track to a Leslie speaker on the studio floor: these normally were used to play a Hammond organ through. The speaker has a spinning horn which has the effect of making the notes swirl around, similar to phasing. The sound was recorded and routed back through onto the mixing desk producing the mandolin sound on the record. I was suitably impressed at the transformation of my little mandolin line to the feature instrument it became in the song. We must have liked this particular effect as the harmony vocals to the chorus of "Float Me Down The River" was also enhanced by the same technique.
The Co-op Funeral Car
Every group has to have a mode of transport to ferry them and their gear to venues. We were at the stage where our amps and keyboards had grown in size to the point where we could no longer travel with the gear and so it was decided to buy a car that could comfortably seat five.
We had completed recording NOOT but had just signed an American deal with Elektra Records and were given a small advance on royalties . Armed with this money, a second hand car dealer in North Shields came up with what he thought would be an ideal solution to our transport dilemma. It was a black Austin FX3 Hackney Carriage, similar to a 1950s London Taxi Cab. It had the glass sliding partition between the front and back but had a passenger door fitted where the open luggage platform would normally be next to the driver. Its previous owner was Newbiggin Co-op, who had used it as a funeral car. It was the nearest thing we could get to a limo and was luxurious compared to our Ford Transit. It had leather seats and that old car smell that vanished from modern production cars years ago.
A stipulation by the boss of Elektra, Jac Holzman was that he insisted Lady Eleanor be rerecorded in sixteen track for suitability for playing on American FM radio. We all still lived in Newcastle at the time and were booked into Trident studios in the west end one evening with John Anthony. We would have taken the train ordinarily but had a gig at Preston Public Hall the following day, so decided to take the Austin. We set off later than planned as Alan was still signing on at the dole office then and we had to wait for him. The Austin ran well for the first hour or so but it was apparent that something was wrong soon after when the engine oil light came on and the smell of burning oil permeated the saloon. The engine had run out of oil which had drained out through a faulty washer on the filter. We stopped a couple of times at various garages on the Great North Road to refill with oil, but it was obvious that the engines days were almost over, our average speed decreasing the further we drove.
We were going to be late for the session so we stopped at a pub to telephone the studio. Being the boys we were, particularly Alan, we decided to stay for another drink to wash down the oil fumes, misguidedly thinking we had only a short way to go. Alas, we still had another couple of hours to travel and didn’t arrive in the studio until nearly midnight. It was the first bollocking we’d ever had from our producer who had been patiently waiting for us for some four hours. Watching the expensive studio time slip by without a note being played had been too much for him to bear. He made us feel very uncomfortable, accusing us of lack of commitment to him and the record company. Lesson learned, we finished the session well into the early morning and then travelled around London to beg a place to sleep on various floors.
The Austin made it back home but not without incident . After playing the gig at Preston instead of driving straight home it was decided to travel back to Newcastle via the lake district to see the sights (at night). A long way round to say the least, and then a torturous drive over the Hartside Pass which climbs to a height of 1904 ft. We were full of wisdom in those days. In blinding rain and visibility as poor as it gets we eventually arrived in Newcastle with the engine sounding like a bag of hammers and smoking like a bonfire.
This was the short lived history of our first group car which we swapped later that week for a much flashier Ford Zodiac. That served us a little longer.
The Record Sleeve
Once we had decided on a name for the album it was left up to Ray Laidlaw and me to design an album sleeve. Another trip to London was ordered by the record company for us to attend a photo shoot. In hindsight, it would have been easier to send a photographer to Newcastle but the record company insisted we came down to also do press interviews. Thinking we would be in some photographers studio with flattering lighting etc. we unfortunately ended up in the middle of a busy roundabout in front of Lambeth Palace with the Houses of Parliament in the background. A great choice for a band from Newcastle, what was our management thinking of? but we had to let it go.
I had designed the group logo which was influenced by Celtic lettering, and Ray came up with the ornate surround from a piece of sheet music his brother Paul had in his piano stool. Using the facilities of Spectrum Design in Handysides Arcade, I pasted all the elements together and gave the design to Charisma for them to give to the printers. After waiting a few weeks for the proofs to be returned, to my surprise, the photos had been printed in magenta instead of black on white. I was told it was too late to change the plates as the printers had already been given the go-ahead to do the first run. So unfortunately, NOOT came out with pink photographs which most people didn’t know was an error, but irks me to this day.