Pete Williams. What people remember. What fans want. What a performer is. Different.

Didn't you use to be...?

Pete Williams. On stage. In his element

Decades ago, I went to watch my beloved but useless football team (I could tell you but you'd die laughing) fold at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers. I was heading home on the train, when a friend, a Wolves fan, called to wind me up. The train was full of Wolves fans, who rapidly clocked that I was being razzed. They sat back to enjoy the spectacle.

I handed my phone to a pal. He loudly name-checked me. Big mistake. 

Amused consternation in the Wolves camp. Coo – they had a DJ in their midst to tease! To be fair, they were actually very nice... for the next interminable hour of ribbing.

But one phrase in particular stuck in my mind: “Didn't you use to be Robin Valk?”

Still am, pal, still am. And when I told this tale to Pete Williams, he fell off his chair laughing.

The day Surinder Sandhu told Steve Vai to wind it down - and down - and down.

The Glorious Process: music cultures flowing to new places, in your town. Be proud.

Some eleven years ago, I was asked to write a review of a newly released album on a local record label. The label folded in the end; financially, it was pretty much a disaster. But the record – ah, the record...! I liked it a lot. I like it even more now. It stayed on my player for months, and I always return to it with pleasure. 

You can still find it in all the usual places. It's called Saurang Orchestra; it was written, arranged, orchestrated and produced by Midlands born and raised Surinder Sandhu. Sandhu now works all over the world, in as many genres as you can dream of. But this early album is, I think, one of the few successful east-west fusion albums. Alongside a huge battery of classical Indian instrumentation, Sandhu deployed saxophones, string bass, acoustic and electric guitars (from, among others, Steve Vai)... and the RLPO string section.

This year, I got to meet and talk with Surinder Sandhu; he was playing at Eastern Electronic Festival. I really wanted to talk to him about this album (but scroll down for details of his newest project) and the bridging of music worlds. 

Here you are, a huge global name, with a contacts book that goes on forever... and you're hardly know in your home town. I don't get it. 

"Somebody said to me, years ago, that you can't be a prophet in your own land! I'm from Wolverhampton, and I've always taken that as good advice. When I was working in Hollywood, working out there, coming back to Wolverhampton, nobody knew who I was. But I'd just been out doing some incredible stuff. It's never been important; the work is always the number one thing. 

"I used to know this guy – sort of still do - he'd walk around Wolverhampton with his guitar, putting his hand up. People knew who he was, but he'd never really played outside of Wolverhampton! I'd be walking alongside him. Nobody knew who I was. I took a lot of pleasure in that. It's a nice thing. He loved the attention, and I loved the work. 

"So the Birmingham thing... Birmingham's a great place. I love the music here, I love the musicians. It's such an underrated city. We've got some of the best musicians in the world, some of the best creatives around. What's interesting about Birmingham is that they are making it happen. Rather than wait for the windows of opportunity, they're making the opportunities. The musicians are doing this. They're going into the venues, setting up nights... I really like that. 

"But coming back to your original question – I don't know. That's how it is."

I guess you go where the work is.

"That's it." 

Can we talk about the Saurang Orchestra album?For me, it's an east-west fusion that actually works. Most of them don't, quite: either it's a western groove with the eastern guys noodling round the edges, or it's the other way around. But not here! How did you pull that sound out of the RLPO string section?

"They were very co-operative! The guys in Liverpool are incredible. The whole of that collaboration spring from me being invited up there to give a lecture on Indian music. We had about 25, 30 musicians turn up. I gave this talk, and I played some Sarangi for them. They loved it. It was the musicians who said 'Will you write something for us? And let's put a concert together!' 

"That, to me, means a lot, more than if it came from the management, so I instantly said OK. So we'd had this thing, and three years later when we came to record the album they were on it, they were happy. But it took a lot of trial and error. 

"You have to understand and respect both sides. Classical musicians can be a bit snobby, they don't think they need to be told."

Is this Western Classical you're talking about?

"No - across the board! Because you spend so much time practising and perfecting what you're doing, you can become a bit insular, a bit single minded with it. I lived in India for a bit, and spent a lot of time around classical musicians, great classical musicians... I'd play a bit of rock or some jazz to these guys. They'd listen to it and say 'Yeah...It's nothing special.. I could do that.' And they'd play something really fast. 

"And I'd try to explain, as a nineteen year-old boy, that that wasn't the same thing! Very impressive of course, but... it's that BB King thing, or a George Benson lick or a Ben Webster lick: playing three notes a certain way is so hard to do. So, so, hard to do. Playing those three notes with passion, with flavour, with feeling – that can take a lifetime of practise.

"But you have to respect it. If you don't respect it, you'll never get that sound. One the Saurang Orchestra album, I was recording Steve Vai - a track called 'Sunday Morning in Calcutta'. Steve hadn't played much acoustic on anything. Some semi-acoustic on Zappa recordings. 

"So I said 'look, I want you to play acoustic'. And he was like 'I'm ready So when we recorded the track. I'd flown in from Calcutta to Los Angeles. I had tapes of the Sarod player. Steve was there, started playing his acoustic, and it was very impressive stuff. 

"I kept stopping him. I must have stopped him about five plus times.

We are talking about Steve - guitar god – Vai, right?

"Yeah. And I kept stopping him and saying 'play less!' 

'OK'

And we'd start recording again... 

'Stop. Play even less' 

'OK' 

"But there's a reason why certain musicians are who they are, and it is because they have this brilliance, this genuine desire to create something special. He's one of those rare breeds, because there's never any ego. He wanted it to be special for me and for me to produce him. If you listen to the recording, I wanted the space between the notes – like we do in Indian music. He played so well on that! 

I'm curious about how you got started. How did you gravitate to the Sarangi?

"When you're in the 60s and 70s, growing up in the UK, the links we had back to India were temples, Bollywood movies, and family events. I don't watch Bollywood movies now, really, but in those days, we sat as a family, and watched on VHS. And I heard the Saurang; as soon as I heard it, I loved the sound. It wasn't until later that I discovered more. There's a fantastic organisation in Wolverhampton called Surdhwani, who do Indian classical music concerts. The people who ran it, Mr and Mrs Sarcar, I think, did it purely out of passion for Indian classical music.

"We had, in Wolverhampton, the best classical musicians in the world coming: Ravi Shankar, Zakir Hussein, Amjad Ali Khan: all the best, the crème de la crème, came to Wolverhampton, because of these guys who loved Indian Classical music. I started going to concerts, I spent a lot of time in the library... taking out books, records, cassettes. That's how I ended up with the Sarangi, and finally moving to Delhi, to study with a master." 

But you're not the only one to do this. Mendi Singh swapped pop banghra for classical Tabla studies. And you like to collaborate, clearly, which is a very Birmingham / Wolverhampton thing.

"I think it's that British thing when, you're from a family of immigrants in a new country. There's two sides of culture, isn't there? There's a fantastic choreographer I work with called Shane Shambhu – he studied Bharatanatyam Indian dancing. He's from a South Asian background. We have similarities in the way we work. What's interesting is the creative parallels: we have this cultural heritage. But then there's the fantastic array of music that we're exposed to in the UK. With respect – because in India it's there, but it's kind of almost a novelty."

Is it filtered in some way?

"It is, even with the internet. But here, we really tend to get stuck in. I was born and raised on great pop music. I grew up on 70s pop music, which was probably the best we've ever had."

You always identify with the stuff you grew up on as a teenager. Can I ask you a question? We've seen things evolve in Birmingham and elsewhere, to the point where we have a fabulously diverse and very cool music scene. But I'm surprised to see so little progression into the mainstream from young Asian artists. Why do you think that is?

"You know, I always say it's about a diet. A dietary process of what you're listening to. If Asian audiences don't have good role models, then you're screwed. I used to have this conversation with the BBC Asian Network about the music they're playing, and why they need to play better stuff. Creative new Asian musicians are not being pushed."

Plus ca change... that radio blockage is no different in spirit from those at US radio in the 50s, and UK radio in the 60s. They played safe and obvious, and held back the new kids until they couldn't stop them. But now we live in an age where radio is not the only way to spread the word. 

And yet, and yet... That glorious process, where music seeps from one culture to another, sometimes over decades, is now happening. The town is bursting with home grown musicians, of undisputed brilliance and adventure. We've hardly scratched the surface. There are treasures to discover, everywhere you look. It's something to shout about, and it's one of the new aspects to this city and this region that gives me a lot of hope. 

Surinder Sandhi is part of that glorious process. And he has a new crossover project in the pipeline: Funkawallahs

"I'm just prepping the Funkawallahs album for mastering at Abbey Road over the next two weeks, after which there will be a month long series of clips appearing online sales. We plan to press a limited edition vinyl batch too  We're not announcing live dates yet but will do after September."

Links

Surinder's web pages, with more details of Funkawallahs.
An earlier interview with Surinder around thw Eastern Electronic Festival

See more music posts on Radio To Go

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Old Punks don't die. They go big in Japan.

Start a band. You'll be amazed what happens. 70s punk veterans Neon Hearts are.

 Neon Hearts 2014 and 1977

35 years ago, Punk was front, centre and huge. Bands who couldn't play, snotty and sneering, drenched in audience gob.

Of course it was choreographed, but it was a great bandwagon for some. The Police, Squeeze, Bob Geldof and even Tom Petty used Punk well to get themselves noticed.

Down the pecking order, Punk really mattered. Local hopefuls? Dansette Damage, Suburban Studs, Spizz, the Killjoys, Dangerous Girls, the Prefects, and more. Most faded away, of course. But this was real and valid to those who were there. The recordings survive, but now they're out of time and context, and there's nothing to hook them to. 

But that lets people pin new meaning to old music. Extraordinary things can happen.

Cultivating precious talent in Gavin's Garden

Gavin Monaghan's Magic Garden recording studio has quietly grown into a powerhouse production centre, simply by concentrating on doing things well. Really well. 

When you visit a recording studio for the first time, more often than not finding the place is a bit of an adventure. Studios are tucked away in basements, shoehorned into warehouses, carved out of unlikely spaces in industrial estates, squeezed into odd bits of residential homes… It’s all very hidden and exceptions are rare. It’s only in colleges and, sadly, now rarely at radio - like the old Pebble Mill BBC studios - that you’ll walk into something open, airy, shinily well maintained, and above all, obvious for all to see.

So it was with Gavin Monaghan’s Magic Garden, arguably the most consistently successful outfit in the West Midlands. It took me half an hour of driving around odd bits of industrial north Wolverhampton, and even then Gavin had to come out and find me – he’s not on anywhere you’ll find on Google maps or your satnav, and that’s the way he likes it. 

Gavin presides over an operation which has turned out some magnificent work in his 21 years as studio manager and producer: The Twang, Scott Matthews, Editors, Robert Plant, Ocean Colour Scene, Carina Round, Nizlopi, and a host of local names including Khaliq, The Destroyers, Guile, Paul Murphy, and Ben Drummond – who was recording when I dropped by, and who will be the subject of a later post on this blog when everything is mixed.  

Vintage tech lust object

There’s not a whole lot of of room in Gavin’s place, and that’s partly because he collects kit - rather a lot of it - and lovingly refurbishes it. His pride and joy is a 1938 Neumann microphone, which he dug up on eBay; but there are classic pieces of kit everywhere you look. 

Vintage kit fetishists can get their kicks reading the kit list on his Myspace blog. 

Notwithstanding all the appeal of gorgeous old equipment, the heart of Gavin's system is a Protools rig. Above and beyond the love of kit, there’s a love of the creative process. And in the teeth of a howling recession, things are looking good

First question, Gavin: How’s business?

Booming. It’s very busy. There’s always been a steady flow of really talented people coming thought here, I’m pleased to say.

And this comes to you how? Word of mouth?

Yes. I don’t advertise. I’m also quite selective of who I work with. It’s hard to put your finger on what makes that happen, but I’m glad it has. It’s nice that current artists come in as well – we’ve still got stuff on and off the radio all the time - I see that as a continuation, and I try to embrace change as it comes along. But… a good song’s a good song. 

I talked with Jon Cotton at Artisan about six months ago, and he pointed out that the tiny studios have now simply disappeared, because people can work with multi-track software on their laptops, and the big studios are scrapping for movie business. So that kind of means that reputation counts for an awful lot.

Yes. You’re only as good as the people you work with. If I get a great band to work with, I’m at my best. If I get somebody… not so great … they there’s not a lot you can do with that. I do a lot of research. I listen to a lot of brand new music. I try to uncover gems. I’m always all over the internet. I approach bands that I hear and like. If I hear something than inspires me, I get in touch. And I try and put as much effort into a job like that as I would with a major album.

That can’t be cost-effective, Gavin…

I don’t care. I’m not doing this for the money. Never have been. 

On the other hand, we’re sitting here, surrounded by squaziliions' worth of vintage kit, which doesn’t come cheap… 

Gavin (chortles)

… but you’ve got Protools up there as your main system.

I like classic sounds, but you’ve got to embrace what’s going on now. So we’ve got all the modern stuff that you’d want. But it’s a good combination. In an ideal world, everybody would still be recording to tape, and perfecting their craft to the point where you wouldn’t need to endlessly edit your stuff to get it on the radio. Having said that, I’m more than happy.

But I think new cheap kit has made a big difference for a lot of bands. They can get their ideas sorted at home, working on their laptops, and recording acoustically where possible…

Sometimes we’ll work with what they’ve already started in their home studio. We end up keeping some of it – I love that. It brings interesting textures into the recordings.

Capacity is a problem here, isn’t it?

Well, we’ve had all 18 of the Destroyers in…

The chat moved on through technology, music quality and sound quality.

I work with music fidelity for a living. My job is to capture the best possible signal. But if it’s going to be reduced to mp3, and that’s how people are going to hear it, then I’ve got to make the best possible mp3 I can possibly make. 

I had a very interesting conversation a while back about distortion in mastering. Most people want to capture the maximum possible volume, with the minimum possibly dynamic range. So part of that process is to distort it, to clip it, so it’s as loud as it can be on radio.

But radio compresses everything anyway…

They use Optimod, yes. A lot of bands and record companies, if you give them something with dynamic range, will say ‘It’s not as loud as the Arctic Monkeys’ – it’s part of the culture. It’s part of the trend, Music is a fashion-based industry. So if that’s the trend, I’ve got to make my masters the best distorted masters I can!

So once Ben Drummond’s mixed and finished up, who’s next?

We’ve got a band called Arrows – a brilliant band. We’ve just done a Radio 1 exclusive with a Birmingham band called Jaws. I’m doing an album with Johnathan Day, a brilliant singer-songwriter. Paul Murphy’s coming in to do his next album. We’re slated to be working with – don’t want to jinx it, but I’m hopeful – with Dry The River. Hope so. My management’s talking to them and various other people.

Management? How does that work?

I have a manager for my production work. I’m a studio owner, but my job is music producer. There are agencies similar to artist management, who manage producers, My manager’s Sandy Robertson from World’s End in Los Angeles. He’s got about 40 producers and engineers on his books. 

How did that relationship come about?

He liked some of the albums that I’ve worked on. The first Twang album – he loved it. He wanted the Twang for another one of his producers, but they wanted to work with me. And after he heard it, it went from there – he’d been listening to my stuff for a while.

But does he understand you and your range of production chops and styles?

I think he works with such a variety of producers… so, yes. I just want to be working all the time. For me it’s important to work with new bands, just as important as working with major label acts who can line your pockets. If I was in it for the money, I’d be a hell of a lot better off!

Gavin's Magic Garden Myspace page