We interviewed Phill Brown in issue number 12 of Tape Op. Over the years he's worked with some of the greatest artists ever, like Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, Traffic, Spooky Tooth, Jeff Beck, Led Zeppelin, Robert Palmer, Bob Marley, Steve Winwood, Harry Nilsson, Roxy Music, Stomu Yamash'ta, John Martyn, Little Feat, Atomic Rooster, and Talk Talk. This is an excerpt from his book, Are We Still Rolling?, and we'll be running more chapters from it in upcoming issues.
Last issue: Phill worked with Glyn Johns, Traffic, and the Small Faces.
The Rolling Stones' album Beggars Banquet was recorded over a two month period during April and June 1968 at Olympic, Studio 1:
The Stones appeared to be split into two camps. In one camp were Bill Wyman, quiet and laid back, and Charlie Watts, the perfect gentleman, always polite and friendly with a warm, dry humour. In the other camp were Mick Jagger, who although he was sharp and amusing I found distant and arrogant, and Keith Richards who came over as being very intense and aggressive. Brian Jones struggled between these two partnerships, having what appeared to be a difficult time. He often looked wasted on drugs or alcohol, but was usually friendly and easy going. He had been trying over the previous few months to give up various drugs including marijuana and LSD. It was rumored that Brian was swallowing speed and drinking two bottles of scotch a day. He appeared by far the most talented of all the members of the band and could play multiple instruments — sitar, marimba, sax, harmonica and wonderful slide guitar. Although he had originally led the Stones, it was clear that he had been demoted and Jagger and Richards rarely appeared to listen to what he had to say. Over the years, it has been suggested by writers that he was suffering from paranoia and believed the rest of the Stones were trying to get him out of the band. I was not aware of this at the time but I did feel sorry for Brian. He was clearly in a very depressed state of mind. He spent a lot of time crouched on a low chair in his booth, hunched over his guitar which he held high on his chest. He looked as though he was having difficulty keeping up with what was going on, or even breathing properly. By contrast Jagger pranced about in a white ruffled shirt, oozing confidence. I had most contact with Bill, Charlie and Brian. They were friendly, with no ego problems and behaved just like ordinary guys. In stark contrast, I had very little communication with Jagger and Richards. Mick treated me as a lackey and I was very wary of Keith.
Charlie was set up in the permanent drum booth on the right hand side of the studio (seen from the control room), with three other booths built out of screens in the center of the room, to accommodate Mick, Keith and Bill. In the large area in front of the control room window we put the piano, the Hammond organ and a booth for Brian. This still left enough space for acoustic set-ups and overdubs. Our start time was any time after 2pm, as we had a 24-hour lock out. The set-up was Charlie — drums, Bill — bass, Brian — acoustic guitar, Keith — electric guitar, bass and percussion, and session musician Nicky Hopkins — piano and organ. Mick played various percussion instruments, the occasional acoustic guitar and sang guide vocals. Nicky was an absolute sweetheart, mellow and relaxed — a real gentleman. Jagger and Richards, along with producer Jimmy Miller, took control of the sessions for feel, approach and arrangements. Each song was first run through and rehearsed with Brian, Mick and Keith. Bill and Charlie were not usually involved until the structure of the verses and choruses had been agreed. We tried out every possibility when recording songs. "Street Fighting Man" was transferred to 8-track from a basic cassette demo of Keith's. Some songs, like "Sympathy for the Devil", went through many different styles and feels before the band settled on a final version. Because of the limited selection of studio effects then available, sounds had to be created at the source, so we tried different guitars, amps and microphones and various unusual locations in the studio building — recording overdubs for "Street Fighting Man" with Charlie playing an African tom-tom in the stairwell. When recording songs played on acoustic instruments, Glyn would use a mic set-up similar to the one he used with Traffic. The band would be in a circle on the floor in front of the studio window on a 12 ft square rug, with African drums, tablas, congas, tambourines, acoustic guitars, bottleneck, bass and piano. Jagger still sang guide vocals as the song was being recorded or played along on percussion.
Some vocals were kept, especially on acoustic numbers, while on other songs such as "Sympathy for the Devil", and "Street Fighting Man" they were re-recorded. The sessions were crowded with maybe twenty or thirty people at a time, and there would be mountains of coffee cups, coke bottles, roaches, and "dog-ends" to be removed from the studio each morning after the session. The visitors were usually smartly dressed, with the men in white or flowered shirts, ruffled cuffs, black trousers or suits. Most of the women also wore trousers, apart from Anita Pallenberg, who favoured Indian-style flowing dresses, either with or without underwear. A similar crowd appeared almost every night and included among them various close friends of the band — Anita, Andrew Oldham, Tony Sanchez and Marianne Faithful. Out of all the women there, I thought Marianne was by far the most beautiful. She was the classic "English rose", with pale skin, long blonde hair, a wide mouth, cute nose and large sad eyes. She had a slight frame and wonderfully long legs — these were usually concealed by a pair of trousers. Although she was then only about 21 years old, Marianne appeared worldly and experienced in life. She was very friendly, amusing and intelligent and always carried a book around with her.
It was during these sessions for Beggars Banquet, that I first experienced a particularly deep and intense enjoyment of music in the studio. On rare occasions, usually during an exceptional performance by a musician, a feeling would occur of being transported, and becoming unaware of my surroundings. This wonderful detached feeling took over, for example, while I was listening to "Parachute Woman", loud, at three in the morning with twenty people in the control room. Then it was everything — romantic, happy, sad, all-powerful — a great "rush". This feeling would sometimes be recalled over subsequent years during a particular artist's performances — in the '70s with Murray Head's Robert Palmer's or Steve Winwood's vocals, and Lowell George's guitar playing. There were other similar moments while recording with Talk Talk, David Malin and Paul Roberts during the '80s.
About two months into the recording of Beggars Banquet, on the 4th of June, the film director Jean Luc Godard turned up with a full crew to film the recording of one song in particular — "Sympathy for the Devil" — for the art movie One Plus One. The film, which was later re-titled Sympathy for the Devil, was about glamour and violence in the '60s — in retrospect providing an interesting archive of the recording of a Rolling Stones classic. The crew laid a rail-track for the camera in a semi-circle around our main set-up, and ran the camera back and forth continuously. Extra lights were set up on poles around the studio and in the roof, with light-diffusing paper over them. The control room was in complete darkness, with no filming taking place in there. The cameras and crew filmed every other night, and different versions of the song were recorded both on tape and on film during a six day period.
I was kept very busy and rarely sat down for longer than a few minutes. Unusually, due to all this running about, I operated the 8-track machine while standing. The 8-track, by contrast with the portable Ampex 4-track machines, was a monster. It resembled a six foot high, floor-standing cooking stove on castors, with deep one-inch tape spools and large illuminated transport switches in different colours. There were polished metal arms to prevent the tape from snagging, glistening rollers, a brass capstan and a "hum" guard that closed over the tape heads. There were rows of switches marked "record", "playback" and "sync" and pots marked "record level", "playback level", etc. Most obvious of all were the eight VU level meters, back-lit and with their needles jumping erratically as the tape was played.
A major breakthrough in recording "Sympathy for the Devil" occurred once the band began to play the song at a faster tempo. They brought in a friend called Rocky Dijon to play percussion, and changed the drum pattern. With Wyman now on maracas, Richards on bass, Jagger on African drum and guide vocal, Rocky on Congas and Hopkins moving over to play the piano, the track suddenly developed a hard, sinister feel and the next night the track was mastered. Jagger's lead vocal and back vocals of "Woo-woo", "Woo-woo", were all recorded simultaneously, with Mick singing on one side of the sound screen and Nicky, Charlie, Marianne, Brian, Bill, Keith and Anita chanting on the other. Keith gave them their cue and pointed in the air every time he wanted them to change key. It was 4:30 in the morning and there were about nine other people in the control room besides Glyn and myself. These included Jimmy Miller who, as ever, kept up the momentum of the session and was always ready to play any of a multitude of percussion instruments. In the main studio area there were a further twenty people — camera men, sound guys, assistants and roadies who worked quietly around the Stones.
On the evening of the 10th of June, as Jagger was repairing the vocal track, I saw Marianne Faithful write "Burn Baby Burn" in red lipstick on the control room window. This was written in mirror writing so that Jagger could read it on the other side of the window. This tuned out to be strangely prophetic. Some time later in the middle of the take, there was a loud "pop" and I noticed Jagger look up to the ceiling and step to one side. Down floated a piece of lighted paper, followed by some small pieces of debris. Now everyone in the studio was looking up towards the ceiling. Whatever was going on was happening directly above our main set-up of amplifiers, piano and Hammond. I stopped the tape machine and looked over to Glyn. "I think we have a fire," he said. "We'd better get out there." Glyn and I entered he studio and for the first time saw real flames. We began to realise the seriousness of the situation. A bulb had set fire to the diffusing paper, which had in turn set alight a hessian panel and then the insulation in the roof. I began moving mics away from the area directly below the fire. The film crew removed their equipment and turned off some of the lights, while the Stones and their roadies and friends grabbed guitars and tried to move amplifiers. It soon became a very dangerous area and only the guitars and smaller amps were rescued. We had no time to try and move the Hammond, piano or any of the larger amps. Meanwhile, Glyn went down to reception and called the fire brigade.
Jimmy Miller, as usual, remaining cool and in control, had just one thing on his mind. By the time I returned to the control room, he had spooled off the 8-track tapes and was collecting boxes of masters together. He asked me to help him carry them down to reception, to retrieve other Stones masters from the tape store, and to call a cab. Within 15 minutes from the moment the lamp burst, Jimmy was gone with all the tapes. The liggers had packed up and left. The area had also been cleared of some of the film and studio equipment and the Stones had dispersed, leaving Stu (Ian Stewart — friend, roadie, manager, gopher, organizer, and former pianist with the Stones) to sort things out as usual. Meanwhile, at the back of the studio, Glyn was in a deep conversation with Jean Luc Godard. At the front of the studio the roof was very much alight and by the time the fire brigade arrived, there was a considerable amount of debris falling to the floor, most of it on fire.
Three fire engines arrived with sirens blaring. The firefighters ran their hoses across the wide pavement, in through the front door and up the stairs to Studio 1. Fire escape doors were opened to the street and all those still left in the building were now evacuated. Glyn and I stood in Church Road and watched the proceedings. There was a great deal of noise and yelling as people ran about and the firefighters got to work. Although the flames could not be seen from the street, there was a huge amount of smoke billowing into the air and a roaring sound that made conversation difficult. Flashing blue lights were reflected in the water that streamed across the road while the police directed traffic. After a short while, lights began to come on in neighboring windows. I noticed that one of the fire engines was being used to spray water directly onto the roof. This was a large building, a former cinema, and part of a larger cluster of shops and flats, all now under threat from water damage if not from the fire.
The fire was put out in less than 30 minutes and Glyn and I were allowed back into the building. There was a strong smell of burning and studio floor had a covering of wet soot. More importantly, there was now a large hole in the roof through which the sky could clearly be seen. There were fragments of charred debris all over the place. Some items of equipment, including amplifiers, the Hammond organ and some of the photographic gear, were damaged and sat more or less where they had been, soaked with dirty water. I was a little shaken by these events and just stood there looking out through the hole to the night sky. "What are we going to do now?" I asked Glyn aimlessly. He did not answer.
The hole in the roof remained for a week or two, until we had finished recording the album. We had to stop recording whenever a plane flew over. Glyn and Jimmy took the tapes to America and Beggars Banquet was finally mixed in Los Angeles. Godard did not return to Olympic to resume shooting, and the film was completed using the footage he had shot before the fire occurred.
Bill Wyman later wrote about Beggars Banquet: "All night sessions at the Olympic were the norm during the completion of the album and the adrenaline was flowing with the presence of Godard's film crew. His method suited us perfectly, for he had no real master plan or film script. He worked from one point to another, filming a piece and then deciding what to do next after looking at the result. As Keith pointed out, that was precisely how we shaped our songs and recording sessions. Nothing was ever firmly laid down and songs went through many changes of structure and rhythm before completion."
