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When I recorded my last album, I really hit upon a recording method that works for me. It's very simple; I play acoustic guitar while facing the drummer and we keep it to to 2 or 3 takes of each song. I don't worry about bleed- the drums in the acoustic mic sound lovely- I don't sweat about a headphone mix (I try to avoid using them if possible) and I don't do 60 takes looking for the perfect one. I'd rather have a few small mistakes, but have the drummer sound awake and interested. Of course, this method requires some simpatico with the drummer. Drummer Rob was fabulous. I knew his playing by virtue of having listened to the Boos millions of times, but I was still surprised at how easy it was for us to lock in and get the tracks done. 45 minutes and we had suitable takes of two songs. We got "badfinger bridge" and then another one called "Second Hand Halo".

Then I jumped on bass, again getting a very good tone quickly by micing up the amp with a U-47 and combining it with a DI track. The nice thing is taht we didn't move mics around at all. the assistants had everything mic'd up beforehand so you could just move from instrument to instrument with no wait. Luckily, at that point I asked Charlie to turn up the kick drum a bit in my headphones, and he replied "How can I do that when the drums are all on one track?" The penny dropped. I had been nattering on about the power of mono drums and he took me at my word and recorded them in mono on the same track. What I actually meant was no stereo spread; 3 mics onto 3 tracks- so it was my fault for not being clearer. The single drum track sounded amazing, but I had to make a fast decision as to what we should do. 3 drum tracks is incredibly minimal by modern standards, let alone just one. I just couldn't see not having the flexibility to tweak the drums when mixing, so I called Rob back in and we re-did the basics. In another setting, I might have allowed this to cause me stress, but I just felt very calm and focused throughout the session and we nailed suitable takes for both songs in about a half hour. I think Rob preferred his performances on the original takes a little, but I reassured him that the re-takes were just as strong. Anyway, it was a very good thing that we figured this out when we did before we added any other instruments.

Charlie is a bass player, so I wanted to give him some nice bass tracks. I could see him watching me from that window way up at the top of the stairs. He made a funny face whenever I got too busy on the bass (which is usually from the word go, I'm afraid), but we got both tunes sorted fairly quickly. And then we had Ed Ball on the Lady Madonna piano, again with the U-47 and U-48s. The studio refers to this piano as the Mrs Mills piano if you'd like to google it, but essentially it's a Steinway upright with hard lacquer on the hammers so it's got it's own sound. Not like a tack piano, but in that general direction. I believe it's also the piano used on "Hey Bulldog" and Paul McCartney used it on his last album, so it's no joke. Ed played some beautiful piano, very minimal in the verses and much more ornate in the bridge.

At this point we decided to take a little lunch break and we all trooped off the canteen. While signing in earlier, I had noticed Ken Stringfellow's name in the guest book and Charlie knew him from working with REM. I am merely a fan, really loved his last album "Soft Commands" as well as his work with the Posies and Big Star. Charlie and I went sniffing around and found Ken in one of the mastering suites on the top floor (where they actually have a cutting lathe, you don't see that in your average mastering room). Abbey Road is a very busy place with three recording rooms and about a half dozen mastering suites, so the hallways are bustling. Anyway, Charlie introduced me to Ken and of course we invited him to stop by after his mastering session. Charlie reassured him that I was a relatively decent songwriter and that it wouldn't be just embarrassing for everyone if he stopped by.

After lunch- during which time I asked Ed if he had a job and he looked absolutely horrified- we all trooped back in and I was showing Ed the piano part for "2nd Hand Halo" when he suggested that I should just play it myself. I have such awful piano technique that I avoid playing in front of other people, but he was most encouraging and I got it in 2 takes. We had moved over to the Challen piano for that song- that's the piano Paul used for the famous David Frost clip of "Hey Jude" and I believe he played it on "Fool On The Hill". I wish I had a copy of that "Recording The Beatles" book here, I could be more accurate. I'll double check what I'm nattering on about and correct any mis-statements.

Next up: guitars. Martin had brought his beautiful Gibson Chet Atkins- his main guitar from his Boo Radleys days- and I brought a tuner (I know my British indie musicians, they always show up without a tuner) and my new janglebox. The janglebox is a little compressor with a treble boost that sounds like instant Roger McGuinn on a Ric 12 string. I've found it to be more interesting on other guitars, actually. Anyway, plugged the guitar into the janglebox and into a Fender amp Martin had borrowed. By this time, he and Rob had retired to the canteen to watch the Liverpool/Arsenal match so I went down to see if he fancied playing some guitar. He was very generous and said "You should just do it. You know the part, I would only be copying what you do or it would take me hours to come up with something." He had shown me a different voicing for the F- chord in Badfinger Bridge earlier, so I felt like his input was there and I decided to just play the guitar parts. I kept the parts nice and simple and we got them down fairly quickly and at that point our 8 tracks of tape were full. Time to transfer to digical so we could carry on.