Soho, Kokomo, Backhanders, Dark Moments, & The Rabbit Punch — Part 3
Trident Studios, Soho, London (1981-1982)
Soho, Kokomo, Backhanders, Dark Moments, & The Rabbit Punch —
Part 3 (of 3)
Trident Studios, Soho, London (1981-1982)
Continued from Part 2 (and Part 1)
I started working at Trident in January 1981. I was eighteen.
I finished working there in around April 1982, so about a year-and-a-half later. In that time I worked my way up from runner, through tea-boy, via audio editing assistant, to tape-operator, and finally, first assistant audio engineer.
This is part 3 of a piece about my experience, my minor and brief blip on Trident’s majorly enormous and influential horizon…
For a fuller taste perhaps also read these articles:
The Ace of Spades & The One-Arm Bandit
In 1985 I was twenty-two, living in London, working as a freelance sound engineer, clubbing almost all the time, and aspiring to be a professional musician…
I, also, am who I am because of Wham! Part 1 (of 4)
This week is more or less one year since I first posted here on Substack. I wanted to mark this with something a little bit different, and also something more personal, a glimpse into my world so to speak.
Ben and Jimmy
During 1981 I briefly moved in with a girl in a South London suburb. We shared a flat with her sister and her sister’s boyfriend, Ben Rogan.
At the time Ben was an unemployed art-school graduate. Straight off the bat, I’m going to state quite clearly that Ben turned out to be one of the most egotistical narcissists I’ve ever encountered. I didn’t know that when he asked me if I’d ask at work if there was an opening at Trident Studios for another teaboy/trainee. I asked. There was. Ben started working at Trident.
At some point, after a few months, a session came in. I was assisting Trident’s house engineer, Chris Stone. Amazingly, I cannot find anything online about him, I had to pinch myself that maybe I got his name wrong, but I don’t think I have. I worked with Chris several times. The session was with Jimmy Pursey (formerly of Sham 69) who was recording a solo album — Alien Orphan. I was supposed to be assisting. Ben was supposed to be the runner/teaboy.
Again (zero dramatic licence or dramatic build-up here) Jimmy Pursey also turned out to be one of the most egotistical narcissists I’ve ever encountered.
Jimmy Pursey is yet another of life’s larger-than-life characters. Big. Dynamic. Strong. Good-looking. Athletic. Obnoxious. Rude. Self-obsessed. And a game-player. He liked to fuck with people’s heads. To play people off against one another. Above all he liked to be, and had to be, Top-Dog in his pack… and he arrived at Trident with, just that, a pack of followers, a real menagerie, at least ten people who were not musicians, who were just there hanging out and taking shitloads of drugs… the only one I can clearly remember was huge American guy from New York called Howie, who must have been at least two-hundred-fifty pounds absolute minimum.
Pursey arrived wearing a huge shin-length brown fur coat and stetson, bare-chested underneath with just a pair of black-leather jeans (perhaps not unlike Russell Brand in his hedonistic period). He pranced barefoot around the client’s lounge, constantly drinking, or smoking (joints and fags) or taking some kind of drug — fuck-actually-knows what exactly.
From word go I didn’t like him. Let’s be clear about this — I really wanted to like him! He was kind of a hero of mine. I had and loved his 1978 album “That’s Life” especially I loved the track “Angels With Dirty Faces”.
Also interspersed amongst the sessions of recording his solo album, Pursey was also recording something with Peter Gabriel, and I assisted on some of these sessions. I don’t recall exactly what the project was — whether it was Pusrsy adding vocals to one of Peter Gabriel’s projects, or vice versa. All I remember is that Peter Gabriel definitely took the producer’s role and was guiding everything on these sessions. And Peter Gabriel also sang some backing vocals with Pursey. I don’t recall much else.1
Anyway to cut a very long story short Ben gelled with this lounge-lizard-zoo clique of Pursey’s groupies much more than I did and he was soon smoking joints and drinking with them. So, I was assisting in the studio and Ben was partying in the lounge. Whatever, no problem.
Then the week of Lady Diana and Prince Charles’s wedding came, and their wedding day was a national holiday. However, national holiday or not, Jimmy Pursey’s solo album recording suitably irreverently ploughed ahead. By that time Chris Stone, the project’s engineer, had moved up to the mix suite and was mixing some of the finished tracks. When I arrived that morning Jimmy Pursey was in the second-floor client lounge, on the sofa, sitting close and talking intimately with a beautiful tall slender young black girl, maybe nineteen or twenty or so, with short Grace Jones-style hair. She was stunning and involuntarily turned my head as I walked past.
I was supposed to be assisting Chris, however, that day, Wednesday 29 July 1981, Chris asked me to go up to the edit suite, two floors above, and take over from Ben, who was up there making safety copies and cassettes of some finished mixes. Chris basically very pleasantly said he wanted to make sure the copies were done properly, that I had more experience than Ben, and that he could just come down and make some tea because right at the moment he (Chris) didn’t really need much help.
So that’s what I did. Ben was expecting me, Chris had called him on the internal phone, and when I got there he just quickly showed me what he’d connected for doing the copies and where he got to in the process… Then he then left, with a cheeky smile (normal for him), and I dutifully got on with making the copies.
I noticed that the edit suite was in a bit of a mess, there were a bunch of cables at the other end of the room behind the small mixing console, and a few mic stands, of which a couple still had mics on. I made a mental note to get that all cleared up before I got it in the neck from Stephen Short or Ray Staff.
I had the edit suite door open because no one from the record label office was there (it was a national holiday).
All of a sudden the stunning black girl walked past the open edit suite door towards the end of the corridor, in the direction of the cutting room. I got up and put my head out the door. I basically asked her if she was ok, and she said she was looking for the ladies’ toilet (which was actually in the other direction, on that floor, but before entering the office area). So I pointed her in the right direction and smiled at her. She was gorgeous. And I felt a little nervous around her, and I think that came across in my attempt at a smile.
And then she leaned towards me and very gently kissed me on my lips. I simultaneously melted and froze.
Let’s be clear about this — things like that don’t normally happen to me! Also, I had a girlfriend. I wasn’t in love, and I knew it was just a matter of time before I moved on, but I had a girlfriend, and it wasn’t my habit to be unfaithful or cheat.
But this stunning girl leaned into me for a second kiss on the lips, and this time her tongue penetrated into my mouth.
Before I knew it we were undressing in the edit suite, door now closed, and we began to have sex on the small recording console.
She was talking to me, full-on pillow talk and I was talking back.
Before we had finished, whilst I was still inside her, the internal phone rang. Without thinking I grabbed it, expecting it to be Chris asking me to come down to the mix suite. However it was Jimmy Pursey on the other end, and in the background, I could hear his menagerie of sycophants cackling.
Jimmy asked what I was doing, and if I was having fun, and then he burst into laughter, and in the background, I could hear myself and this black girl talking to each other in the throes of having sex — those fucking arseholes had recorded us! It was all a setup! When the girl heard Jimmy on the end of the phone she immediately stopped, turned stone cold on me, pushed me away, dressed, and left.
To be clear, the edit suite, in fact, all of the studio rooms throughout the building, were connected by a network of cables (tie lines). Basically, Ben had set up a microphone in the edit suite which was then connected to a tape recorder in the mix suite downstairs via these tie lines. This setup had all been meticulously planned. I have no idea what this girl was given for doing what she did, or how Jimmy Pursey persuaded her to do it, but she did it. I also have no idea why Jimmy Pursey hatched all this, and why Ben Rogan willingly assisted him. My best guess is that this was two egotistical narcissists’ idea of a practical joke and one they both plotted together. I was really shocked at Chris Stone, he also must have been in on it, and now he could no longer look me in the eye. Not true of Ben and Jimmy. Jimmy would not stop going on and on about it, and Ben — now well in with the in-crowd — just kept giving me that cheeky “I got you” grin.
And he had got me. He lived in the same flat as my girlfriend and me. He could have easily told her, so I had to be cool with him, and he knew it.
Anyway, Ben now assisted on most of the remainder of those Pursey sessions, and I was relegated back to making the tea for it. Remember, I helped get Ben the job at Trident. Fucking prick. Needless to say, I never talked to him ever again, and I soon moved out of our shared flat after splitting with my girlfriend.
During the next few days pretty much everybody at Trident came to know about what had happened to me in the edit suite on that national holiday. I had to endure all the comments and jokes. Most of all I had to endure Stephen Short’s relentless mocking — mostly his Punch and Judy version of our pillow talk. Yep, they’d played him the recording. 2
This piece that I’m writing now, about my time at Trident, is one of several pieces I have written and plan to write about my time in the music industry. I’m aware that in this piece I have now recounted two quite dark anecdotes. They are definitely the exception and not the rule, and to a certain extent, I’ve included these two not-so-pleasant anecdotes on purpose, to include this authenticity into the flavour — like I’ve said, it was not all one big happy music business party. I don’t intend to make a habit of this. I witnessed enough debauched distasteful drug-fuelled behaviour and met my fair share of self-obsessed narcissistic characters. Hopefully, these two anecdotes I’ve recounted here will be enough to make readers aware (if they were not already) of the industry’s darker side. These anecdotes can act as reference points and represent that darker side in all my future pieces, meaning there is no need for me to delve back into these darker moments. And belive me I don’t want to, best to let sleeping dogs lie.
Adam Mosely and Kokomo
Perhaps the first, and most important thing to say about Adam Mosely is that he was a really genuinely nice guy! He really helped me and nurtured me whilst I was at Trident.
I think it is also wise for me to use Adam as an example of what I mean about Stephen Short. When I was at Trident Adam was a newly (but fully) fledged audio engineer. Like me, he had gone from being at teaboy, to a tape op, to an assistant audio engineer etc… Like me, he left Trident in 1982, and in 1983, when Trident officially reopened under Stephen Short’s management, Adam returned as the main in-house audio engineer. He got along with Stephen Short and Stephen treated him well. I really want to emphasise this, that I recognise this, one man’s meat is another man’s poison.
As I’ve said Adam nurtured me into fast becoming a hands-on assistant engineer. He was then, as he still is now, a great teacher. And by hands-on I mean that I actually got to touch the faders on the mixing console, not just operate the tape machines.
It’s worth noting here that around about this time, around 1982 or so, the first auto-locate systems for multitrack tape machines began to appear. Essentilay this was small console, often on a tripod on wheels, with all the tape machine controls on it. Basically a big remote control. This meant that an audio engineer could now sit at the recording console and operate the tape machine (which quite often was located far from the console) himself, including puting it into and out of record. The age of the valiant Tape Op was fast coming to an end…
I did many sessions with Adam. Many of them were just one or two days. We worked in both the main recording studio and in the mix suite. I really cannot remember in detail exactly which projects we worked on, however, it would have been anything in the studio diary that required a house engineer (meaning that an external engineer was not coming in with the project).
One such project, although much more than a few days, more like two or three weeks, was with Kokomo.
Kokomo, were a breakthrough British Soul band (think Jamiroquai much more than ten years before Jamiroquai existed), and were recording an album, called “Kokomo”. The album was being produced by an American named Leo Graham. In the end, the album was recorded and mixed using three different studios. Trident was where the vast majority of the initial track laying (recording the framework of the songs) was done. The main overdubs and the mixing were mostly done elsewhere. This was my first album project as an assistant engineer. Meaning, I didn’t have to make the tea! And I didn’t have to run the tape machine. I had to set up the microphones, connect them to the recording console, make sure that their signal was getting to tape, and plug-up and organise all the auxiliary hardware — compressors, gates, external equalisation etc.
To be honest I cannot tell you much more than that, it’s all just a fuzzy blur. What I do remember is that quite a few band members (who I think had all recently been in the USA) and the producer had little glass containers full of coke, on chains around their necks, which had a little scoop-spoon built into the lid. I’d never seen that before. And these guys were quite generous with the contents. I also remember Neil Hubbard, who was just a phenomenal guitar player. I remember watching him very closely when he was tuning his guitar using a Peterson strobe tuner. I’d never seen one. I tuned using a tuning fork (or pitch-pipe) or to a keyboard by ear. The first digital tuners didn’t appear until the mid80s, so this device Neil Hubbard used fascinated me, as you could tune a guitar perfectly, and visually see which strings need intonation adjustment. Finally, there were the bass player and the drummer, Alan Spenner and Tony Beard. That year I’d been listening to Grace Jones’s breakthrough album “Nightclubbing” on my new state-of-the-art Sony Walkman (lol). this was my first contact with the great rhythm section, Sly and Robbie. Honestly, Alan Spenner and Tony Beard together were in that league, so tight, with such an amazing feel and groove.
Around about this time, Norman Sheffield, Trident’s big boss, summoned me to his office. I felt sure that was it, I was going to get the chop… As it turned out he wanted me to do him a favour… To be clear this was towards the end of 1981, and was probably the first conversation I’d had with Norman Sheffield — and as it turned out it would not be the last. He’d heard that I was a guitarist. He’d heard that I was also a budding songwriter. And Adam had told him that I was becoming quite adept at the recording console. So Norman Sheffield asked me to come in one weekend when Studio One was free and record his son (who was a drummer) Russel’s band. Not only that he asked if I would help them finish a song because they had some musical ideas, but as yet no lyrics and melodies. They didn’t have a singer either, but they wanted to try out this female vocalist, so if I wanted I could also sing with her. So basically in one or two days, I was being asked to help them write a song, record it and perform parts of it… so, that’s what I did.
Here below is the song, from 1981, from a cassette of quarter-inch mixdown tape (which I’d attempted to edit and botched quite badly — you’ll hear, for example around the 33-second mark), recorded in Trident Studio One. Russel is on drums. I can’t remember the names of anyone else, I only met them once over that weekend, now forty-three years ago). Lyrics written by yours truly — I’d recently seen a Marlon Brando film called “A Streetcar Named Desire”, so my lyrics were inspired by that film. I co-wrote the music with Russel Sheffield’s band. I’m singing backing vocals along with the young woman lead vocalist that they were auditioning that day. I’m playing guitar. Kind of a punk / funk / jazz fusion LOL — it’s absolutely terrible but it is what it is… The song’s called “Drugstore Romeo”.
I was also in a band with some school friends, and we also recorded once in Trident Studio One, however, unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I don’t have that recording anymore, it’s lost.
As I’ve mentioned much later, in 1983, Adam Mosely came back to work at Trident as the main house engineer. In 1982, when I was working at CBS Whitfield Street Studios, I helped arrange a weekend session there for Adam to record a band he was producing, called Mirage. They’d had a minor hit released on Trident Records in 1980 called “Summer Grooves”. This session was off the books, basically, CBS’s truly amazing nightwatchman, Jimmy, looked the other way whilst a whole band with all their equipment came through the main CBS studio’s front door late one Friday evening. Bless him! What I remember most about assisting Adam with that recording session — apart from the fact Adam had told me it would just be one or two people with him, but in actual fact it was the entire band, which was majorly stressful, seeing that we were not supposed to be there, and they were quite uncontrollable — was Morris Michael, the band’s co-founder and guitar player — I’d never heard such clean tight funk guitar playing before. Adam took his experience at Trident and went on to engineer and produce many artists.
So, yep, moonlighting was a thing. I’d be in the studio whenever I could somehow find some free studio time. Here (below) is a demo I recorded at CBS in 1982 with my band, The Shriek — a kind of hybrid punk/indie band — with me on guitar, and two friends from school, Neil Brett (on bass) and Steve Rush (on vocals), and a gifted drummer Steve knew, named Neil Faulkner.
The song is called “Argon Xenon”. I wrote the music, with lyrics by Steve Rush, and I produced the demo.
Finally, here’s a blurry photo from that year of us (The Shriek) performing in the 101 Club in Battersea.
Other fragments…
In the first part of this piece, I mentioned various artists that I worked on sessions with whilst at Trident. Here, below, are a few related memory fragments.
Altered Images — The film “Gregory’s Girl” had just come out and was a success, so this projected Claire Grogan and Altered Images front and centre into the limelight. I don’t recall what they were recording or mixing, just that there were a lot of people who arrived with them, and that the client lounge was full of management people doing meetings and making phone calls etc. I don’t think their 1981 hit number-one single “Happy Birthday” had been released at that time. It was produced by Martin Rushent, who came into Trident during that session, but he wasn’t producing or recording, just visiting. I met him properly (as in was introduced to him) a year or so later at his studio, Genetic.
Howard Devoto, and the Buzzcocks. I think I probably got this somehow cross-wired in my head. For sure, Howard Devoto came into Trident. I don’t know if it was for his own project, or if he was working on someone else’s project. It could have been something to do with Magazine, I just don’t recall. I think Pete Shelley from the Buzzcocks also came in, however, to be honest, that was during the Altered Images session, I think Pete Shelley may have just been visiting with Martin Rushent.
The Associates were working on a track for the album Fourth Drawer Down, either doing overdubs or mixing. The album was released that year on the Situation Two label, an independent label founded by Peter Kent, whom I met, got along well with, and stayed in touch with. Peter eventually introduced me to Jaime Petrie, with whom I formed a songwriting partnership.
Heaven 17. I was a huge fan of The Human League, and at that point, the relatively newly formed Heaven 17 had released one single "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang" (which was banned in England by the BBC) and their Penthouse and Pavement album had just been released, so they were right on the edge of a wave of notoriety and success. They were at Trident doing overdubs, again I don’t recall what songs. Glenn Gregory was a nice guy, very chatty and normal. He was out in the lounge quite often, just hanging out with people, and talking. Martyn Ware was also friendly, yet he was really much more serious, focused and almost always in the mix suite control room working. He was using a lot of synthesiser equipment that I'd never encountered before. I remember that Heaven 17 recorded a bass guitar session with a black teenager, I think from Birmingham (or someplace else in the Midlands), about my age. He arrived wearing a long military parka, had never been in a recording studio before, and had never played on anything professionally. He was someone that they had met recently, somehow heard him playing, and decided to try him out. He was so wide-eyed and nervous but turned out to be an incredible slap-bass player. I don't remember the track they were working on just that bass session.
Adam Ant and Marco Pirroni were both in Studio Two, the mix suite, together very briefly, maybe one or two days, late in 1981. Marco Pirroni was recording guitars, and I really took notice that they were producing together themselves — so there was no producer or big-name audio engineer with them. Adam Ant was a huge star then. Adam and the Ants had quite recently had a number-one album and a string of top-ten singles, including at least one number-one, so the truth is, Adam Ant was probably the biggest contemporary popstar that had been at Trident whilst I was working there.
Finally, I think for clarification I should very briefly focus on Stephen Short and Rusty Egan. During 1981 these two were collaborating together (with Jean-Philippe Iliesco) to raise funding with which to buy Trident from Norman Sheffield.
Stephen worked with Brand X, as a producer, engineer, and mixer (Craig Milliner also engineered for Brand X), which was a spinoff of Genesis, who had recently bought and were refurbishing their own studio in Surrey, The Farm. So members of Brand X and Genesis were often coming into Trident, sometimes just to visit Stephen, or sometimes to work on some project with Stephen (and I assisted, however, with no recollection of exactly what on). Another person who visited Stephen, occasionally sat in on sessions and seemed to be part of this clique (who could also often all be found together next door in The Ship), was Rick Wakeman.
During the second half of 1981, Rusty Egan was much more often at Trident, for some weeks at a time almost on a daily basis (BTW I had more to do with Rusty in the future than I did in 1981). He’d be up on the record label floor in one of the offices, or in Studio Two, the mix suite. At the time Rusty was collaborating with Midge Ure on the group Visage with Steve Strange. And Midge Ure was collaborating with Billy Currie (also in Visage), a founding member of, and keyboardist in, Ultravox. Ultavox’s original singer John Foxx left in 1979. (BTW I was a huge John Foxx-era Ultravox fan, especially their album Sytems of Romance.) Midge Ure joined Ultravox in 1979, and early in 1981 they had a top-ten hit with “Vienna”, co-written by Billy Currie and Midge Ure (with Warren Cann and Chris Cross). 1981 was also huge for Visage, they’d had a top-ten hit with “Fade To Grey”, produced by Midge Ure, and co-written by Billy Currie and Midge Ure (with Chris Payne). So this consortium of Synth-Pop musicians — who seemed focussed on Trident as a base — was on fire. They were in and out of Trident quite often during 1981, and I assisted on several sessions, although now I have no recollection of exactly what. Keep in mind that at that time, in the early 80s, Synth-Pop was the huge new kid on the pop music block, especially in the UK, and in 1981 Visage and especially Ultravox seemed poised to take this new genre by storm. At the time the Synth-Pop king was probably Gary Numan, who had introduced an almost industrial Kraftwerk “Autobahn” influenced style in 1978 in Tubeway Army. Then in 1979 and 1980 there was a Synth-Pop explosion in the UK — just for example, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (especially their influential 1979 song “Electricity”), Yazoo, Blancmange, Depeche Mode, Erasure, The Pet Shop Boys, Talk Talk, The Human League, Heaven 17, China Crisis.
The Rabbit Punch
Towards the very end of 1981 Norman Sheffield asked me to come and speak with him in his office. It was mid-morning. He ushered me in and asked me to close the door behind me. He looked grave, very serious. He said that he had a very important errand he needed me to run for him, and that he was asking me because he trusted me. Basically, he gave me a bag, inside of which was a folder full of legal documents, and a rabbit punch — Trident’s company seal. He wanted me to get a black cab and immediately go to a lawyer’s office in the East End of London and deliver the bag and its contents. When I arrived I was to keep the cab on the meter, waiting for me to return immediately to Trident. I was to not let the documents or the punch out of my sight, not for a signal second. The punch was to be used to emboss the papers in the bag and some other papers at the lawyer’s office, which the lawyer would then sign in front of me, and someone else there (I don’t know who it was) would also sign them. I was to then bring all the papers and the rabbit punch directly back to him and only to him. This I did. And he then gave me some cash for me and told me I could go home early.
That day, in late 1981, I didn’t fully understand what I was doing. However, during the next few days, after overhearing fragments of several very hushed conversations in corridors and the client lounge, I figured it out. Those were the sale agreements for Trident Studios. Norman Sheffield had sold this legendary studio, that he and his brother founded in 1968. I’d witnessed the signature and sealing of those seminal sale documents.
Soundtrack to Trident 1981/82
It’s all in a name
For those of you who like to delve, as a sound engineer and songwriter, I used more than one name, so for example (amongst others) Nic Briscoe, Nic Casparis, Nic Rudrum, Rudrum, U.NIK, and there were several Ting and Stuff’n’Ting remixes.
Please note: I have another infotainment channel on Substack, called Unleashed & Unlimited, where I post podcasts, articles and content unrelated to music.🖋🎥🎙
I think Jimmy Pursey recorded a single that year, co-written with Peter Gabriel. For sure I remember them both doing a cut with Ray Staff, so probably that single. Maybe they were doing some overdubs for this in Trident, or improving some of the mix equalisation, or patching up some of the vocals. I recall them doing a vocal session together in Studio Two’s vocal booth (in the mix suite control room). Apart from that, I don’t remember much, just that I could not believe I was in the same room working with Peter Gabriel… back then “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” — the song/the album, was one of my absolute favourite recordings, still is.
I don’t think this kind of client and employer abuse of an employee could so easily happen today in 2024. Back then, in 1981, well I had no union (so no rep to go to), no employment contract, no regular appraisal or meeting with my line manager, where I could raise issues, no free-phone 0800 number I could call to get advice or report abuse. And, if I had reported it (which never even crossed my mind at the time) what exactly would I have told the police…? And how could I have gone back to work having reported it? Those kinds of antics in the music industry were all just par for the course. You just had to suck it up and get on with it… That day really opened my eyes and toughened me up.
Whilst on this topic — the differences between 1981 and 2024 — in the 80s, in London, I never heard anyone talking about the long-term dangers of listening to music loud — about irreparable hearing damage, tinnitus, and hearing loss. If anything it was a taboo subject — a musician or an audio engineer could not admit publically they had some hearing issues, that would be professional game over for most studio professionals.
I definitely never saw any ‘possible dangerous noise level’ warning sign or sticker as I entered any studio control room (or live soundstage). I definitely never had any member of any studio staff sit me down and run me through the scenarios.
Now, today, in 2024, that information is available and easily accessible, and also the general topic (hearing-related issues etc) is not taboo. Most studios now have mandatory warning stickers in any area where sound could be loud, same for soundstages. When working in such environments (studios, festivals, tours etc) staff have to sign paperwork stating that they have been warned and understood the hazards. Also, there are now sophisticated in-ear attenuation devices, including low-level in-ear monitoring. Back in the day (and I’m sure this is also true today) some studios I worked in had speaker systems that could deliver sound levels easily as loud as a jetliner passing over your living room. And quite often producers and audio engineers and artists would listen at those kinds of levels whilst recording.
There are a number of industries that attract an over-abundance of narcissists and sociopaths, and music seems to be one of them. You were lucky to have the negative experiences early on, so you could adjust expectations and behavior. Would've been harder to have a bad experience later when you had more invested and could have lost more. You seem to have learned and turned it to your advantage. But the 80s were crazy in general. Kind of an out of control decade in so many ways.
Love the stories, Nic! And the vibe of the songs you were playing on and mixing.