Gazza
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Rat Bastid "We piss anywhere, man.."
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Belfast, UK
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Its from Bob Greenfield's new book on the 1971 tour, mate. As serialised in The Guardian. I posted the link to it : http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/06/goodbye-great-britain-the-rolling-s...I vaguely remember that Dalton book. The first Stones book I ever read came out around that era as well (although I didnt read it until about 1977-78 or so). It was by George Tremlett - went up as far as about 1973, as did Tony Scaduto's Jagger bio which I read just afterwards. Tremlett's book here (cover is somewhat different now!) - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rolling-Stones-Story-George-Tremlett/dp/0860071286Kimsey's piece on 'Tattoo You' is fantastic. Presume this is the one you mean. A great read : http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr04/articles/classictracks.htmAnd getting back to the subject of this thread, an interesting piece on the Sticky Fingers sessions from him on the same web page : While assisting on the sessions for the Stones' classic Sticky Fingers album at Olympic in 1971, Chris Kimsey didn't work on the centrepiece song, 'Wild Horses'; but he did nearly destroy it. Engineered on eight-track by Glyn Johns, the recording required more tracks and so Kimsey was assigned the straightforward task of making an eight-to-eight copy. With one 3M machine in Studio One and another at the opposite end of the building in what was then known as the reduction (mixdown) room, the trainee decided to make the copy immediately after the session ended, at about three in the morning, when no one else was around. Accordingly, he put the master reel on one machine, loaded the virgin tape onto the other, checked all the connections, pressed Play on the master, ran the two-minute journey to the reduction room to make sure the correct signals were coming in, pressed Record, ran another two minutes back to the main control room, rewound the master, again pressed Play, and then returned to the other room to monitor the copy. So far, so good. However, after about a minute, the incoming sound slowed right down and ground to a halt. Trouble. Running as fast as he could to the Studio One control room, Kimsey duly discovered that the takeup spool was bent and stuck, causing the tape to wrap itself around the capstan motor until it stopped. "The tape had wrapped itself neatly around the motor, but with creases every inch and a half," he now recalls. "I was shitting myself. I started lifting it out, incredibly slowly and delicately, and hours went by before, at around six in the morning, [studio manager] Keith Grant came in for an early session. Well, he took one look at me in a big heap on the floor, and after asking what happened he got a big, heavyweight iron — obviously not hot — and helped me press out the creases. It took me hours, and then I had to sit there and play the tape for hours and hours and hours to get the creases completely out. To this day, none of the guys has ever been told about this." Why bother? After all, Kimsey hadn't escaped quite as easily a few years earlier, when starting his career as an Olympic tape-op-cum-teaboy. Showing off the copy room equipment to a girlfiend, he spotted an opportunity to impress her even more when Steve Marriott of the Small Faces popped his head around the door and asked, "'Ere, mate, can you make a copy of my album? We've just finished mixing it!" At this point, Kimsey didn't even know what mixing was, but he was happy to comply. Putting the master and copy reels onto a couple of Studers, he set both machines in motion and then wondered why no sound was forthcoming. "'Ere, where's the f***in' music?" Marriott enquired. "It should be startin' by now!" When Kimsey took a look, he noticed that he'd put both machines in record. A good 30 seconds had been wiped off the first track on the album. Yet, unaware of the work that had gone into Andy Johns's mix, he coolly remarked, "Oh, never mind. You'll just have to do it again." Marriott was less than impressed. "He had to go upstairs and have the song remixed," Kimsey recalls. "However, about five years later, when I was engineering a Humble Pie session, Steve told someone the story and then turned to me and asked, 'Is that guy still here?' 'No, no,' I said, 'they got rid of him ages ago!'"
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