| 'This
was Mr Bleaney's room. He stayed
The whole time he was at the Bodies, till
They moved him.' Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,
Fall to within five inches of the sill,
Whose window shows a strip of building land,
Tussocky, littered. 'Mr Bleaney took
My bit of garden properly in hand.'
Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook
Behind the door, no room for books or bags -
'I'll take it.' So it happens that I lie
Where Mr Bleaney lay, and stub my fags
On the same saucer-souvenir, and try
Stuffing my ears with cotton-wool, to drown
The jabbering set he egged her on to buy.
I know his habits - what time he came down,
His preference for sauce to gravy, why
He kept on plugging at the four aways -
Likewise their yearly frame: the Frinton folk
Who put him up for summer holidays,
And Christmas at his sister's house in Stoke.
But if he stood and watched the frigid wind
Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed
Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,
And shivered, without shaking off the dread
That how we live measures our own nature,
And at his age having no more to show
Than one hired box should make him pretty sure
He warranted no better, I don't know.
From "The Whitsun Weddings"(1964)
Published by Faber and Faber Ltd
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Terry had recorded various parts
for the song previously in other studios but opted
to re-record most of them in Fairview so we started
with him playing a guide guitar to a click track.
He then played the drums and added several overdubs
including bass, guitars and keyboards. Towards the
end of the day when time was running very short
we decided to use a lead vocal track and a couple
of backing vocals he'd recorded in Japan earlier
in the year. We had these as wav files and Terry
was happy with the performance so we laid them into
the track complete with reverbs and delays as recorded.
This is what you hear on this session.
Mics
were as follows....
Bass drum mic..... Audix D6 set inside the bass
drum along with an Audio Technica 4047 just outside
the shell, summed to mono and compressed with a
Focusrite Red direct to Radar.
Snare Drum was mic'd with a Sennheiser e609 on the
top, also through my TLA mic pre and a Shure SM57
underneath through a desk channel balanced, phase
checked and summed to one track via a Urei 1176
compressor.
The toms were mic'd with Sennheiser MD421s and recorded
flat.
The overhead drum mics were Neumann u87s and I also
put up a Golden Age R1 Ribbon over the snare and
toms. This had a thicker sound and I fed it into
the mix after compressing it.
Having no other musicians playing with the drums
I was able to put up an omni AKG 414 in the adjacent
room to capture some ambience from the kit.
The bass guitar cab was mic'd with my Neumann u47
fet through a GA Pre 1073 and compressed with one
of my old AD limiters straight to Radar.
The
acoustic guitar was mic'd with a Neumann KM84 against
the neck and an ADK TT tube on the main body, both
summed to mono through a Urei 1176 compressor for
smoothing.
The
electric guitar parts and noises were recorded using
the ADK TT close up against the amp grille.
Keyboard parts were added direct from the keyboard
into our Soundcraft 2400 desk and sent to Radar
via a Focusrite Red Stereo compressor.
Because
we ran out of time on the recording day we had to
find some extra hours for mixing and we were able
to do this with the help and agreement of Jim Orwin,
the project co-ordinator who managed to wangle some
time from other parts of the budget.
Mixing was'nt tricky...I'd pretty much recorded
things as they finally appeared. Terry added some
sound effects and we altered a couple of guitar
parts which he'd modified at home between recording
and mixing.
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