Motorhead memories of Rockfield

12pm - Work on my book has come to a standstill. I'm using a Mac to write the book and I'm still learning the intricacies of this machine. It's a wonderful laptop and the Macs are so much faster than PC's that I wish I'm discovered them sooner. But this morning the simple act of inserting consecutive page numbers has beaten me. Hours of scrolling through 'Pages' (the Mac version of Word) have proved fruitless. The frustration. Its always the simple things that prove your undoing. Like when your football team manages to beat the world's best one week, and then somehow slips up against lowly Mottlespur United the next.

Arggghhh!

12.30pm -- Decide to put some of the photographs I've gathered on Rockfield on a CD and send them to Nicky at University of Wales Press. She'll be dealing with the books illustrations. This proves an easier task and my faith in cyber world is restored. Well partly.

1pm -- I type up and Send off a thank you to former Motorhead producer Fritz Fryer. After a brief chat he asked me to email him some questions regarding his time at Rockfield with Lemmy (PICTURED top left in Cardiff 2004) and the guys. He sent me a four page essay packed with hilarious stories about the making of the band's album there. In one he describes how the band decided to help him get through the marathon recording sessions as only Motorhead know how:
"I had an absolute ban on myself taking stimulants…. but thirty-two hours of non-stop concentration had taken its toll. I had been turning up the volume more and more in an attempt to rivet my attention, the volume control was now at eleven and I was seriously tired.
One of Motorhead breezed into the control room and said ‘You need a line or we ain’t going to make it’.
He could be very persuasive, taking out the mirror glass, razor and white powder. The band seemed to prescribe one every twenty minutes. Whilst resisting the frequency, I did succumb to his medication, which saw me through the next sleepless forty hours”.
with guitarist
2pm - The room is getting smaller and I can hear beer calling me. I try to resist. I've not done nearly enough work today though. But the call of alchol is growing louder. This has been a very disrupted week. Next week will be better, I promise myself.
Next week I must start work on my Robert Plant chapter. That was a very good day. I managed to persuade Robert Plant and his first solo band to reunite at Rockfield (PICTURED bottom left -- Guitarist Robbie Blunt, former Black Sabbath keyboard player Jezz Woodroffe and Plant himself ). They recorded two albums at Rockfield: Pictures at Eleven and The Principle of Moments. It was a great afternoon. Robert explained how working at the studio was a rebirth for him after the demise of Led Zeppelin the year earlier. He even moved to Monmouth afterwards he liked it so much. Anyway more on that next week.

(ROCK LEGENDS AT ROCKFIELD will be published by The University of Wales Press in 2007)

Hawkwind, LSD and naked ladies

I'm still coming to terms with having quit my day job at BBC Wales. One of the great things is that I can finish my book on the legendary Rockfield studios (Main Quadrangle Studio is PICTURED Bottom Left) - home to the likes of Queen, Oasis, The Stone Roses, The Manic Street Preachers, Annie lennox, Motorhead, Robert Plant and many many more.

But I'm discovering that working from home is tough going. There are so many distractions. The TV. Endless repeats of Starsky and Hutch and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century are testing my will power to breaking point. I need to adopt 'Spartan Warrior' mode. Then there's the endless cups of tea and snack breaks. And maybe I'll take my tenth break of the morning to feed some more CDs into my Ipod and it's only 11am!!!!

11-15am. I'm distracted by a strangled cooing type sound. I look around my attic office to discover the source of this horrible noise. Nothing obvious springs to mind. Ahhh looking outside, I see two demented pigeons who've decided to use my window as a beak sharpener. Great! Where's Ozzy Osbourne and his gun collection when you need. Note to Self: Start writing the Black Sabbath chapter of the Rockfield book tomorrow. Maybe!

1pm. On the plus side I've managed to finish Chapter Six. Well. It's 95% written (which is good!) - though it's now been retitled Chapter Seven. Big decisions such as this are really mind-spinning!!! Though by tomorrow it may well be Chapter Eight. Oh the power I wield in my own small world. It's quite a head rush. But I am quite pleased with it. It focusses on the time Judas Priest, Ian Gillan and Rush spent at Rockfield Studios. Judas Priest arrived at the Welsh studios in 1975 to record Sad Wings of destiny - the album that created the Priest sound they have to this day. Ian Gillan remixed Clear Air Turbulence in 1977 while Rush (PICTURED Top Left Live in 2005) left Canada for the first time to record Farewell To Kings and Hemispheres at the Monmouth studio. Rush chose the UK to come to as they were big fans of the British Prog Rock scene. Once they'd chosen Rockfield, they were taken aback by just how rural the place is.
I was delighted that Geddy Lee could take time out from recording Rush's new album (the band are now back in the studio in Toronto laying down the tracks until christmas) to speak to me about their time at Rockfield. “We were quite excited to be there. Everything was foreign. Everything was different so it took us a while to settle in. The second day we were there, the guys went for a long walk across a field behind Rockfield and ended up getting chased across the pasture by a herd of cows. We realised then it was the rural life for us for the coming weeks."
It seems the recording of Farewell to Kings went well but Hemispheres proved to be a nightmare as the band arrived in Wales with no songs written and found the whole process hugely troublesome the second time around.
But that chapter's done and out of the way. It's onward and upward.

2pm. Carry on with the task of gathering photos to illustrate the book. So far Brian May has kindly contributed two from his personal collection of his time at Rockfield including one of him sitting at the Piano on which Freddy Mercury recorded Bohemian Rhapsody. Paul Carrack has also sent a few as has the producer of Judas Priest: Geraint Hughes.
Today I call Dave Brock - the founder member of Hawkwind who back in February promised he'd look up some photos for me to use. Dave's an absolutely top guy and really really helpful.
Chapter Four is all about Hawkwind's time at Rockfield. They've made about 20 albums there since around 1973. My favourite is Doremi Fasol Latidio. It was the first one Lemmy played one. I love the opening track Brainstorm. Dave told me a fantastic story about the making of this at Rockfield:
“One of the tracks we were having problems with was called ‘Brainstorm’. Our sax player Nick Turner just wasn’t getting it. So to help him out, we decided to spike his drink with LSD in the hope that it would sort the problem out. But somehow Nick got wise to our plans. He kept avoiding any food or drink we put his way. ‘I’m not touching that’ he’d shout and then storm out. In the end we had to get some of the road crew to help. One of them spiked Nick’s yoghurt with LSD. And you know what? It worked. Nick played the piece really well and ‘Brainstorm’ was completed. He played it much better under the influence of drugs.”

Hawkwind are back on tour in the UK next month (October) and Dave's working on a whole collection of tapes he's found and dusted down from Hawkwind's time at the studios (mainly centring around 1977). He's hoping the finished product called 'The Raockield tapes' will be out next Spring (2007) on Voiceprint Records.
The Hawkwind chapter was one of my favourite to write and it starts with a cracking tale about Hawkwinds' girlfriends and wives swimming naked in the river monnow near Rockfield. There's also a great story of tantrums and tears surrounding the band's brief recruitment of ex-Cream drummer Ginger Baker.

5pm Must crack on! Oh that's becoming a bit of a personal catch phrase. I must put a stop to saying that right now. But first I must crack on.

JUDAS PRIEST, MOTORHEAD AND FOOD FIGHTS

I'm struggling to get my head around work today. My mind is occupied by a strange mental image.
The thought of JUDAS PRIEST and MOTORHEAD having a food fight is a surreal one. My money would be on MOTORHEAD to edge this battle (despite being outnumbered by PRIEST). This happened in December 1975 when both bands were recording at the legendary Rockfield studios. MOTORHEAD were recording their debut album (but it would be shelved and not released until 1979 following the success of 'Ace of Spades' when United Artists would issue it as 'On Parole' to cash in on their former band's sudden chart success). JUDAS PRIEST were at the Welsh studios to record their second album 'Sad Wings of Destiny". I have just interviewed producer Jeff Calvert, who worked on the Priest album, for a book I'm writting on Rockfield Studios, which will be published by The University Of Wales Press next year.
It was a bizzarre match-up. Jeff and his colleague Geraint Hughes had a number one hit at the time with the novelty song 'Barbados' as the band TOTALLY TROPICAL- becoming pin-ups in the likes of Smash Hits. Putting these teen heart-throbs together with JUDAS PRIEST must have seen the band in full 'jaw dropped' mode. But it worked. Jeff and Geraint took the band away from the Blues rock of their debut album Rocka Rolla and created the sound which is still recognisable as Priest to this day. But plans for a JUDAS PRIEST/TOTALLY TROPICAL co-headlined tour failed to materialise!
Jeff remembered bumping into MOTORHEAD at Rockfield one day after Lunch with Rob Halford and co. The studio is a converted farm in Monmouth in Wales. It looks nothing like a major recording studio. It looks like a farm. But the likes of BLACK SABBATH, QUEEN, RUSH, OASIS, and THE STONE ROSES have recorded there. But it seems that day in the courtyard just alongside the main studio, MOTORHEAD and JUDAS PRIEST squared up for a big food fight. The only collaboration between these two metal greats involved hurling bread rolls, potatos and veg at each other. That's a shame and not jst for the people who had to clean up the mess afterwards.
Today I must buckle down to work on Chapter six of my book -- which concentrates on the period when JUDAS PRIEST, RUSH and IAN GILLAN recorded at Rockfield between 1975-77. Can I drag myelf away from repeats of FRAZIER on the Paramount Comedy Channel? Yes, of course I can. I must finish this chapter today. Hold on though! This is the episode where Frazier is dating a supermodel and no-one believes him. It finishes in 25 minutes. I'll start then.