I had wanted my friendly brass experts for the job, but the EMI executives had their own system - and friends. The situation in Studio Two, Abbey Road, was different. Whether it suited or melted the chocolate bar is not known. So they helped me loosen up while making most useful suggestions and tightening their rhythmic inflections. David Mason was one: he did the high, piccolo trumpet, part for the Beatles ‘Strawberry Fields’. They were also some of the best players in the country, took great pride in their work and were very nice with it all. But these musicians had plenty of experience with challenging writing and were glad to be in a different environment. I never forget turning round after the first splintered run through to peer through the control room glass and witness advertising executives sliding down behind a giant sofa and tearing chunks of stuffing out of it with their teeth. This thirty second rhythmic contortion was a microcosmic forerunner of some of the brass writing for Epic. He was even more awesome because he was a tall and most accomplished West Indian modern jazz bassist living on the top floor while I was a differently accomplished banjo player in a damp basement. The lower ones were provided by the most gentle but truly awesome Coleridge Goode, a direct neighbour in Elgin Crescent. Four of the New Philharmonia Orchestra trumpet section occupied the higher frequencies. The recording was in the huge converted cinema of CTS Sound Studio in Bayswater. Yes, imagine a Swiss chocolate bar called Noga accompanied by four classical trumpets and a jazz double-bass, bowed and plucked. It may appear different but it leaves me in its fully-formed shape.’ In my case, it meant adventurous writing for small combinations such as flute, clarinet and bassoon, or four trumpets and a double-bass. Edgar Varèse said something like, ‘None of my music is experimental. This is not ‘experimental’ but ‘progressive-mental’. Whatever the sound sources, I always wanted to explore new possibilities.
#Atom mother heart tv#
Why did I need these musicians? As part of that survival in the market place, some TV commercial producers and directors wanted ‘real instruments’ while others were happy with my more alternative sounds. He was already in his 60s and his father was composer Joseph Holbrooke, a lesser contemporary of Elgar. The memory of how the initial contact occurred has melted into the mists, but it may well have been through its lead bassoonist, Gwydion Brooke, a proper individual. My limited previous experience with musicians had been with the finest soloists from the New Philharmonia Orchestra. Here they were, knackered from too much touring, not able to read music, mine or anyone else’s, and just able to stitch a framework together, into which we were about to enter to force some stuffing and then clad the whole in multifarious material.
Here I was, having fetched some musical material from the depths over the last three weeks, not skilled or confident enough to be able to decode it for my friends, not even really knowing what I had conceived at all. ‘Hello Ron, you look relaxed and on top of things.’ ‘What? I’ve got this and that going wrong and some bugger’s not paid me for the next thing!’ ‘Ah!’ says he, ‘The Swan Syndrome: appears graceful above the water but paddling furiously below.’ I remember much later meeting a schoolteacher acquaintance in the local high street. The atmosphere was fairly sparky, if one was clairvoyant enough to see beyond the feigned relaxed postures. Compared to my little steaming padded cell of a studio, this was a cathedral complete with a stairway to God, the control room, presided over by the now-famous sound engineer Peter Bown. The lithe men were draped over chairs, couches and desks. on 19 Friday June 1970 I pushed my way through diverse doors into Studio Two at EMI Abbey Road Studios. In this exclusive extract from The Flaming Cow, renowned composer, Ron Geesin offers an insight into his often fraught collaboration with Pink Floyd and shares his memories of recording Atom Heart Mother, the band’s most controversial album.
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