From The Beatles to Kate Bush, Sir Edward Elgar to Kayne West... this year sees the north London studio celebrate 90 years of history and hits. Steve Sutherland on Abbey Road
We could begin at 8.54pm on the 25th of June 1967, when the cameras cut to the studio about 40 seconds earlier than expected to discover producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick scrambling to hide a bottle of Scotch whisky beneath the mixing desk. They'd been taking a tot to calm their nerves before the tricky task of mixing the audio for the live worldwide broadcast of The Beatles' contribution to Our World, the first ever live global television link.
From the Stones to the Sex Pistols, and early Pink Floyd... Steve Sutherland tells the story of one of the world's pre-eminent studios, beginning with its turbulent past
It's the volcano that finally does for them. Hurricane Hugo, the tropical cyclone which struck in 1989 had been bad enough, of course, wiping out whole villages, cutting off all power supplies, tearing the roof off 90% of the buildings, killing ten and seriously injuring 89 citizens, and making 11,000 of the island's 12,000 population effectively homeless.
It was where Big Star were born, Primal Scream embraced the Blues, and Isaac Hayes made Hot Buttered Soul. Steve Sutherland has the story of Ardent Studios in Memphis
Over there in the corner is a teetering tower of folding chairs. On the chairs are sheets of glass. And around the tower are something like 100 microphones, all set up and ready to capture what comes next. And what comes next is cacophony as the band hurl cinder blocks at the tower in an attempt to simulate the sound of a car crash.
As much a community as a recording complex, Bearsville gave birth to albums as diverse as The Band's Cahoots and Meatloaf's Bat Out Of Hell. Steve Sutherland has the story...
His ultimate weapon was silence. Which was weird considering his vocation in life was managing musicians. Don't get me wrong, Albert could curse and scream and bully and belittle with the best of them, but when all the histrionics were getting him nowhere he'd just clam up and stare like a statue. For a very long time. Which usually freaked everyone out and then, of course, they'd accede and he'd get what he came for.
Synonymous with legends such as Sinatra, The Beach Boys and Nat King Cole, this studio in Hollywood has a pedigree spanning over 60 years. Steve Sutherland on Capitol...
Imagine if Jimi Hendrix had decided to release an album that wouldn't feature any guitar. Or that John Coltrane announced a long player sans any sax. Or Miles Davis did an LP on which you didn't hear one toot of horn. Madness, right? No way José.
Once home to Aretha, The Eagles, Clapton and the brothers Gibb, this facility in Florida now turns out chart-topping hip-hop, Latin and R&B. Steve Sutherland takes up the tale
It may never feature in those lists of events so seismic that people remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. But what happened in Chicago's Comiskey Park on 12 July 1979 remains significant enough to engender heated debate even today.
In London's Soho lies a studio that has rocked to Thin Lizzy, rolled with Robert Plant and now has big plans to bring immersive audio to music fans. Steve Sutherland explains
Not wishing to teach anyone's grandma to suck eggs, but it might be worth beginning by having a quick look at Dolby Atmos. A surround sound technology reasonably recently developed by US company Dolby – or 'Dobly' if you're a Spinal Tap fan – it's a system that allows sounds to be moved as objects in a three-dimensional space, coming atcha from above, behind, inside, outside... everywhere.
Built by Jimi Hendrix, this studio is not only steeped in rock history but is still used by the top recording artists of today. Steve Sutherland catches the Greenwich Village vibes
The sum was $1,032,425.26. That's how much, in today's money, that his engineer Eddie Kramer reckons Jimi Hendrix was paying every year renting studio time in the late 1960s. And that's why, when Hendrix and his manager Michael Jeffery told Kramer they'd bought a venue at 52 West 8th Street in New York's Greenwich Village and were planning to turn it into a nightclub, he told them they were crazy.
From The Righteous Brothers and Ramones to Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, the music made in this LA studio still resonates around the globe. Steve Sutherland has the story
You could say that he was obsessed. Ever since he'd heard that record on his car radio and been so overwhelmed he'd had to pull over to the side of the road, his life had never been the same.
Founded by two brothers in the 1960s, this German studio was where David Bowie, Depeche Mode and U2 made much of their best music. Steve Sutherland has the story
There were pieces of me laying all over the floor.' That's how David Bowie remembered 1976. Living – though that's hardly the word – on a diet of milk, red peppers and cocaine, every successive alias he ditched – Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, The Thin White Duke, The Man Who Fell To Earth – had been like shedding a layer of skin. And now, what's left of him is a skeletal ghost, a fading shadow of his former selves.
The Four Tops, Jackson Five, The Supremes... they all cooked up classics in a studio so small they called it 'the snake pit'. Steve Sutherland has the lowdown on Motown
Even a genius can have an off day, and this was turning out to be one of them. Berry Gordy was in his office in LA and was shaking his head in dismay. 'No', he kept repeating. 'No.' The recipient of his negativity was Marvin Gaye, who had flown in from Motown's Studio A in Detroit to play his boss what he'd planned as his prospective next single.
This facility in San Francisco has been home to bands as diverse as The Grateful Dead, Green Day and Santana. But first Steve Sutherland salutes the man behind the brand
During my late teens in the mid 1970s, whenever I browsed through the stock in a record shop, if I came upon an album produced at Wally Heider Studios, no matter who it was by, I was more than likely to buy it. Such was the quality guaranteed by the Wally Heider brand that the studio became a kind of shrine to me, a far-off holy grail that shone in my imagination as did that holiest of live venues, the Fillmore West.
From Dusty to Deep Purple, The Beatles and The Stones, in the '60s and '70s this studio quickly became home to pop and rock's leading lights. Steve Sutherland has the story
So, here's how you do it. Take two synchronised tape copies of a finished recording and play them simultaneously into a third master recorder, all the while manually retarding the rotation of one of the two tape reels by pressing on the flanges, manipulating the phase difference between the two sources. Easy-peasy. Now you can flange.
Built originally for pop sensations ABBA, this studio inside a disused cinema has rocked to the sounds of Genesis, The Ramones and Led Zep. Steve Sutherland has the story
There were four in the group but most of the time only two made it to the studio. One absentee was holed up in a nearby hotel attempting to kick a drug habit. The other was an alcoholic who could hardly get out of bed and would die soon enough, choking while passed out in a stupor.
Elvis, The Everly Brothers, Dolly Parton, Jim Reeves... Steve Sutherland tells the story of the home of a thousand hits – the recording studio that gave birth to the Nashville Sound
Dolly was in one heck of a hurry. She was running late for a recording session and if there was one thing that Dolly wasn't ever, it was late. Not only that, this was her debut appointment at Nashville's RCA Studios and she didn't want them thinking bad of her for being tardy.