Mr Steve Brown
Mixing tracks with legend, Steve Brown at The Townhouse Studios, Shepherds Bush, London 1986
In late 1986, when I was twenty-three, my musical partner-in-crime, Jaime Petrie1 and I were both signed as singer-songwriters to Warner Chappell. Our original A&R guy, the one who signed us, was Clive Black, Don Black’s son.
We were based in West London — Jaime in Shepherds Bush, and I was (I think temporarily) in Maidavale.
Jaime and I were writing together and separately. We were rehearsing regularly with a pool of musicians, and recording with several producers, trying out ideas, playing occasional gigs, and working on our sound.
We were in the preliminary stages of being ‘managed’ by an up-and-coming label manager and publisher named Mark Beder. Our lawyer back then was the late great Alexis Grower.
Although at that time Jaime and I had never officially commercially released any of our own material, we had been in negotiations with several major record companies. In particular, we were in the advanced stages of signing a multi-album deal, through Mark Dean (founder and label manager of Innervision Records, Wham’s original label. At the time Mark was at Virgin Records, deeply involved with two of their subsidiary labels — Siren Records and Virgin 10 (aka 10 Records).
One very wet and dreary autumn weekend, just before we finally signed our album deal with Siren Records, Jaime and I found ourselves, very last minute, in the legendary West London Townhouse Studios, with the equally if not more legendary, and very charming British, audio engineer and record producer — Mr Steve Brown
For a fuller ‘back-in-the-day’taste perhaps also read these articles:
Hazel O'Connor — Part 1
Steve Brown
Prolific British producer and engineer.
Born 16 January 1955 — died 31 December 2020.
Mr Brown should need no introduction. Nevertheless, here goes.
Firstly, I met Steve in 1982, when he recorded and produced the UK number-one album Fantastic for Wham! — which included three top-five singles in the UK. That in and of itself should be enough to inform you of Steve’s calibre, which is international multi-platinum award-winning.
I was Steve’s assistant engineer for the Fantastic album. I write about this experience in a four-part article starting here…
As I mention in these articles Steve became a close friend and, for a while was like a mentor to both myself and Jaime. And actually, for me at least, he felt a bit like an older brother. I was constantly doing dumb-twenty-year-old shit, and Steve — who must have been in his very late twenties at the time — on very many occasions either turned a blind eye, bailed me out, pointed me in a better direction, or told me what for. However, he always did this with his own very kind gentlemanly style — with a grin and glint in his eye, and laugh and arm round the shoulder at the end of it all.
A lot of my dumb shit from the 80s is a blur now, but I remember on one occasion, in early 1985, for all intents and purposes, I stole Steve’s car. Or at least I went AWOL for a day or so, after he had, very nervously, against his better judgement, agreed to lend it to me for just an hour or two, so that I could move something, from one place to another — I think it was from Acton, in West London, to somewhere near where I came from in the Surrey Hills area. So about a three-hour round trip maximum.
Steve had a bright-red Alfa Romeo GTV6. He lived near Clapham Common, where his car was parked, and he simply wasn’t using it at all because he would be in a recording studio close by almost 24/7.
So, the plan (or at least the one that Steve agreed to) was that I’d come to meet him at Olympic Studios in Barnes, South West London, he’d give me the car’s keys, I’d then go to Clapham Common, to his street, get the car, drive to Acton (about a twenty-five-minute drive), get my stuff, drive to the Surrey Hills (down the A3, just less than an hour), unload, and then come immediately back, park the car near his flat again, and then get the keys back to him at the studio in Barnes… Steve underlined that it didn’t really matter to him when, because he was going to be at Olympic almost all the time for perhaps the next week, and he didn’t need the car (he was getting taxis), BUT the agreed plan was: be careful, don’t drive fast, return the car and the keys ASAP.
Anyway the first stages of the plan, well, apart from the don’t drive fast bit, went to plan, perfectly.
The final part went a little pear-shaped. I was aged about twenty-two. And that Alfa GTV6 was something else, just amazing to drive — especially on the A3 (a fast straightish road, with some smooth curves), which back in those days had far less traffic. When I got home to Surrey, I dropped off the stuff I needed to move, and then, exhilarated by my fast A3 drive, went directly to meet some mates in a local pub, just for a quick catchup. Of course, I showed them Steve’s GTV6. Of course, they suggested we go for a drive, go somewhere and put it through its paces, maybe down to Brighton and back. Of course, I did the math in my head — I could probably do this and get back to London in time — one thing led to another, and late the following morning I finally headed back up to Clapham Common. I parked Steve’s GTV6. And then went straight to Olympic to give Steve the keys — which I did as nonchalantly and as indirectly as possible, at the studio’s reception area (saying I didn’t want to disturb Steve’s recording session), leaving the keys in an envelope with a message to give them to Steve ASAP, thus avoiding any direct conversation with Steve himself… and then I immediately split. Mission accomplished. Nobody was any the wiser… or so I thought…
What I hadn’t factored into my, well, not plan — because I never planned this London to Brighton Alfa GTV6 road trip — what I hadn’t included in my young-dumb thought process was that Steve knew the mileage of the car. He had it noted down, and there were now a few hundred unexplained miles, which, a few days later, he asked me to explain… So, busted, I had to ‘fess up. Steve was pretty stern with me about it, he was no push-over, however, in the end, he was joking about it, and gave me a hug as I was leaving. That’s how he was — bighearted, generous, and fun. He was a kind man.
During my road trip, Steve was at Olympic Studios, in Barnes producing what would become one of the most iconic (Gothic) Rock singles of the 80s — the anthemic “She Sells Sanctuary” by The Cult. By the way, this was almost forty years ago to the day (“She Sells Sanctuary” was recorded between 11th to 15th March 1985).
A few years before Steve had suggested to me to go and audition as the bass player (it could have been just as a stand-in bass player, for a tour or some gigs) for a Gothic Rock band he was friends with. At the time I don’t think they were called The Cult, I think they were called The Death Cult or The Southern Death Cult. Steve suggested this audition because he could sense I was torn between working in a recording studio, as an audio engineer, and wanting to be much more actively involved in playing music live and recording my own material, as an active contributing member of a band. At that time, I’d just met Jaime Petrie, and he and I had started writing and recording songs together. Besides, I wasn’t a Goth, so I passed on the bass player audition offer.
Steve had kept contact with The Cult, and during 1985 he produced and recorded their “Love” album — the album that launched them internationally — mainly in the residential Jacobs Studios in Farnham, Surrey. However, “She Sells Sanctuary” was recorded some months earlier in Olympic Studios, in Barnes, West London. In a conversation, Steve explained to me part of the reason why.
Basically, Steve had a hunch about something, and he wanted to experiment and try out an idea.
Steve had been to several of The Cult’s rehearsal sessions. He’d also seen them perform live. He’d agreed to produce their next album. Subsequently, during some try-out recording sessions with them, Steve noticed that the singer, Ian Astbury, was the one struggling with recording certain songs. To be very clear, Steve said that Ian wasn’t struggling with technical stuff, like the tuning or phrasing, or remembering the lyrics or the arrangement. No, no. Ian was struggling with delivering the performance he himself wanted. What he was delivering was good, but he knew he could do better, and was getting frustrated.
In particular, he wanted to perform the songs like he was in front of an audience, moving around, on and off the mic. Being in a claustrophobic vocal booth with cabled headphones, well, it was just destroying the vibe for him. The test recordings didn’t capture anywhere near the vocal energy the songs had when The Cult had performed them together live in rehearsals.
Steve, ever the ideas man and proactive facilitator, had a plan. It was both very technical and extremely creative.
Steve and the band felt that “She Sells Sanctuary” stood out as perhaps the strongest song out of the proposed material for their planned album.
Early in 1985, before recording the entire album (which would become The Cult’s “Love” album) Steve suggested recording that song, “She Sells Sanctuary” on its own at Olympic Studios in Barnes.
The next bit I can’t remember clearly, I’m not sure if Steve set up a vocal microphone area for Ian in the actual recording studio control room, or in the studio live area.
However, the main point is that Steve ditched the normal practice of using headphones, in a vocal isolation booth, whilst the vocalist overdubbed their lead vocal performance.
Instead, Steve set up a pair of studio reference monitors (I think he said they were Yamaha NS10Ms) in a large-ish open space (so not an enclosed booth), for Ian to be able to hear the song’s backing track (so the drum, bass and guitar parts) without needing to use headphones. He positioned the microphone and the pair of speakers, which were wired up out of phase, in such a way that the signal from one speaker cancelled out the signal from the other, meaning that Ian could hear the backing track but it did NOT get picked up by the vocal microphone, which only captured Ian’s vocal. This meant that Steve had more or less simulated what Ian would hear if he was singing live on stage to an audience. And there was no need for any cabled over-ear headphones, or screen-baffles, or vocal booth, so Ian could move around freely, just like in a live performance.
Today, in 2025, you can easily do this in seconds, automatically, with advanced algorithms and AI — just think karaoke apps. But back in 1985 don’t underestimate just how technically difficult this was to set up! And most audio engineers wouldn’t even know this was possible to achieve, let alone do it. To work, this setup has to be exact. And this kind of attention to detail, technical brilliance and thinking outside of the box is exactly what Steve Brown was known for. He knew recording equipment and techniques inside out. He was innovative. He would spend hours twiddling knobs and adjusting mic positions, experimenting and perfecting— it had to be perfect.
Although I did not personally witness this particular setup, I worked with Steve in similar situations, and I can picture him, almost constantly smoking a Marlboro Light, totally focussed on the equipment he was adjusting, constantly listening to and checking the outcome of his endeavours. Sometimes this would take several hours, Steve wouldn’t quit until he was satisfied.
For the “She Sells Sanctuary” vocal setup the final touch was to get dozens of candles, candle sticks, some Goth paraphernalia (I’m not sure exactly what, but think faux skulls, ornamental crosses and such), and various bits of material — heavy curtains and the like — and create a Gothic candlelit alter-type setting.
So, in a nutshell, Steve’s idea — which he achieved — was that Ian could perform unhindered by cumbersome headphones and annoying cables, in an almost live Goth nightclub venue atmosphere. He could move freely, and hear his own voice and the music, just like being on stage, through stage monitor wedges.
Steve recounted that it took several attempts on his end to get it technically perfect. He had to figure out the most suitable microphone (I think he said he chose a Neumann U47) and microphone pickup pattern, the best settings for some of the phase switches and settings on the console, and adjust the position of the out-of-phase pair of speakers in relation to the microphone… however, after a bit of trial and error he eventually found the optimum set up that gave him the sweet spot he needed, so the microphone picked up virtually none of the signal coming through Ian’s monitor speakers. Trust me, when I say again, this is not easy to achieve, and demonstrates Steve’s technical brilliance and dogged persistence and commitment to perfection — he wanted to capture a perfect vocal performance from Ian…
And the rest is history. “She Sells Sanctuary” was then, and still is now, a landmark in Rock history. The stunning clarity and power of the recording and production (Steve Brown’s trademark). The brilliant simplicity of the songwriting. The incredible musical performance of the entire band. And, of course, Ian Astbury’s beyond-awesome vocal delivery. Steve Brown captured it all — again, producing, recording and delivering a hit single and a hit album, again, like he did with Wham! ABC, The Manic Street Preachers, The Alarm, The Pogues, Alison Moyet and Freddie Mercury, to name but a few.
Townhouse Studios
Anyway, during 1986, Jaime Petrie and I asked Mark Dean (the A&R guy who we were in negotiations with, to sign a recording contract) to pay for us to do some recordings with Steve Brown producing, for us to see how it was for us working together.
I was totally 100% up for this idea. I’m certain Jaime was too, he and Steve got on amazingly well. In my mind’s eye, for these tryout recordings, I envisaged engineering for Steve (and this is how it worked out), with Steve producing, however with a massive amount of input from Jaime and me. So kind of the three of us co-producing together (again, this is kind of what happened, however, Steve was without doubt the one who influenced the recordings the most and had the final say).
What neither Jaime nor I had factored in, was the history between Mark Dean and Steve Brown. I don’t think Steve had a problem with Mark, however, unbeknownst to Jaime and I, Mark harboured resentment towards Steve due to the acrimonious split between Wham! and their original label, Innervision Records, of which Mark was the founder. Although he didn’t show it at the time, Mark had no intention of agreeing to have Steve Brown as the producer of our first album. As I said, at the time, before any recording contract had been signed, Mark agreed to pay for the tryout sessions with Steve and appeared to be totally open and up for the idea. However, that’s not how things turned out, but that’s totally another story…
In total, I think Jaime and I recorded five of our songs with Steve producing. As far as I know, none of the two-inch twenty-four-track master tapes survived, they’ve all been either lost, or destroyed, or remain in storage in some record company archive somewhere.
Of those five recordings only one was ever totally finished, complete with final mixes… and only metal cassette reference versions of those mixes survived. There were also two other songs that got to the mixing stage, however, there were some glaring gaps and errors in the recordings that needed re-working.
And that brings me back to what I mentioned in the introduction to this post…
One very wet and dreary autumn weekend, just before we finally signed our album deal with Siren Records, Jaime and I found ourselves, very last minute, in the legendary West London Townhouse Studios, with the equally if not more legendary, and very British, audio engineer and record producer — Mr Steve Brown…
Jaime and I seemed to be constantly busy. We were in rehearsal studios almost every day working with our band. If we were not rehearsing there always seemed to be something else we had to do. Mark Dean wanted us to do try-outs with photographers for marketing materials, or for us to record demos of new material, he wanted us to churn out more and more songs. We also had some finished recordings for which we were working on ideas for videos. We’d made a couple of videos ourselves, to show our ideas… so there was hardly any free time and Jaime and I were both almost always sleep-deprived due to one thing or another — it was great, full on, but amazing.
Then, late in the week, like Thursday afternoon or Friday morning, Steve contacted us saying that there had been a last-minute cancellation at Townhouse Studios, in Goldhawk Road, Shepherds Bush, that weekend. He could book two or three days for virtually nothing because it was so last minute, he knew the studio manager, and he could get this amazing deal. Were we in? Did we want to go in last minute and finish a couple of tracks (so do the final mixes, from twenty-four-track multitrack down on to two-track stereo masters)? I was exhausted from a week in rehearsals, but of course, I was in. Same for Jaime, beyond knackered, but totally up for this.
However, truth be known, the next morning I felt a bit differently. Stupidly, I’d stayed up late the evening before, and had quite a bit to drink and smoke. Now, early on Saturday morning, head splitting from a hangover, I headed to 140 Goldhawk Road, Shepherds Bush, to The Town House, which even back then, in 1986, was legendary. It had to be one of the most sought-after studios in London. Normally it was booked up for many months in advance, like at least half a year or more. So this last-minute opportunity was incredibly lucky, like gold dust.
Jaime lived locally, just around the corner, so I’d stayed at his flat the night before, which is where the drinking and smoking had happened. That morning Jaime was chipper and looked as fresh as a daisy. He also looked well-presented, dressed very cooly as usual. He had one of these RocknRolla constitutions that didn’t even seem to get dented by a few too many drinks or yet another spliff. Different story if he’d had too much hard liquor, like half a bottle of Whisky or more, however, as I say that’s another story, and not for here.
Anyway, there we were, Jaime, Mr Brown, and me, in one of the two control rooms at The Town House. I should’ve felt excited, but at best I felt subdued, my head really hurt. I didn’t even feel that inquisitive about The Town House, about actually being there, doing a mixing session there, on tracks I’d written (or co-written) and recorded. I should have felt exhilarated, but it had already been a long week, and this was just another dreary rainy London day, and I could have done with some Surrey Hills countryside, a walk, and some fresh air. But I was stuck inside yet again, in a studio control room, without windows, with a brutal fucking hangover, nope, I wasn’t happy…
I didn’t even do my usual snoop-around the reception area of a new (to me) studio — you can learn a lot in reception, who’s been in recently, who’s in now, who’s coming in soon…
And Jaime being so chipper and chirpy really wasn’t helping… how the fuck did he look so fresh-faced, bastard…
And then he and Steve started with some jovial very loud banter… it was way too early for this, my head was banging, and already this was getting too much for me… I was officially in a bad mood…
We had from like tenish on Saturday morning until lunchtime or so the following Monday, and Steve wanted to attempt to mix three of the tracks we had recorded with him. That’s a tall order. Usually, a mix would take at least a whole day, normally coming back in the next day with fresh ears to double-check everything and do so last-minute tweaks here and there. With an automated mixing console (which we had, an SSL, I don’t recall exactly which model or version), in theory (if the automation worked well) this was all easily doable. But still, two-and-half days for three final mixes was tight.
So, hungover and in a bloody bad mood, I got my head down into work mode. I helped align the multi-tracks, and then got our two-inch masters laced onto the machine. After this, I made sure the console was zeroed (so, all the equalisation on all the channels was set at zero etc), and then I patched up a whole bunch of outboard signal processors for Steve.
I knew for sure that at some point, soon after starting the session, Steve would start doing an approximate track balance and start adjusting equalisation. So, I knew I could probably go and get my head down on the sofa in the studio lounge for an hour or so… bliss…
Then at some point after lunchtime, I could feel a low vibration through the floor, it was someone in the other studio (there were two at The Townhouse) listening to something really loud. I could not hear it, I could feel it. Someone else was working there that weekend.
Anyway, even after a thirty-minute or so snooze in the lounge, I was still hungover and still in a very bad mood. I needed a piss, so I headed to the gents.
The men’s toilet at The Townhouse was just like a typical London pub’s gents. It was basic, painted a very dark colour, with very dim lights, and it had a typical Armitage-Shanks shared urinal — where maybe three men could stand side-by-side taking a piss.
I stood in front of it, unzipped, got my chap out, and began to piss. As I did the door opened and someone else walked in. They approached the urinal, so they were slightly behind me. As this guy unzipped he simultaneously, hawked up what sounded like a large quantity of phlegm into his mouth, and as he stepped forward on final approach to the urinal, with his chap in his hand, he spat it out with quite some force onto the floor right next to my foot (so not gently into his side of the urinal but flobbed on to my floor space).
This was too much for me. I was already in a fucking bad mood, and my head ached excruciatingly. Without thinking I turned towards this guy, dick in hand, and yelled out…
“WHAT THE FUCK, MAN!”
However, my face immediately changed from incensed anger to smiling and excited, and I found myself saying “Johnny! Unbelievable! You’re Johnny Rotten.”
To which John Lydon, dick in hand, scoffed back “I know!”
Anyway, I turned back to my business, tried to regain my composure, and basically in a very few words as I finished and zipped up, told Johnny that I was a huge fan, and had been since I was a teenager. And that it was a pleasure to meet him.
“Right on, man.” was the reply, and I decided it probably best not to offer him my hand just then…
I went back to the studio control room and told Jaime and Steve who I‘d just met and how. They both laughed and then Steve explained how he’d managed to get the studio so cheap that weekend. I have to reiterate The Townhouse was probably one of the top five sought-after studios in London (so the world) at the time.
PiL were booked in there recording something. And actually, I don’t know exactly what. I tried to research it a bit, for example on Discogs, and I couldn’t find any reference to anything recorded by PiL at TownHouse around that time.
But, here’s the thing. A very big name was also booked into The Townhouse at the same time as PiL, someone very famous, an international megastar. And they had basically said they would not set foot in the studio complex whilst Johhny Rotten and PiL were on the premises. And they put pressure on The Townhouse to cancel PiL’s booking.
The Townhouse had refused to be pressured into doing this, so this megastar had pulled their booking last minute. Hence, the last-minute free studio time, at a rock-bottom price.
Steve explained that this happened to PiL a lot. Unbelievably, there was a lot of snobbery in the music industry back then. And no, I do not recall the name of the megastar.
Anyway, we got back to work, and that weekend Steve mixed three of the tracks we’d recorded with him. The other two never got finished. And, as I said, all that I had after these Townhouse mix sessions was a metal cassette of the three mixes.
Here they are below.
Love Peace and Understanding — this track is like 90% finished. It would have needed a few easily doable overdubs and repairs
The River Song — same for this track, 90% finished, it needed a few overdubs and repairs here and there.
Walking with the King — this one, well, I think we just about nailed it. Tight. Bright. Punchy. Energetic. It’s got Steve Brown written all over it.
Please note: I have another infotainment channel on Substack, called Unleashed & Unlimited, where I post podcasts, articles and content unrelated to music.🖋🎥🎙
At some point in the not-so-distant future, I intend to write at least one post about my songwriting partnership with Jaime.