Fact #68271
When:
Short story:
The Real World Week Of Recording begins at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios complex in Box, Wiltshire, England, UK, Europe. Artists taking part include Sinead O'Connor, The Holmes Brothers, The Grid and Van Morrison.
Full article:
Peter Gabriel: World Party
Johnny Black, Q, November 1991
One week this summer, Peter Gabriel's dream came true. Musicians of the world, from Sinead O'Connor and Van Morrison to stars of Lapland and Tanzania, met up at his Wiltshire studios for seven days of "happening grooves" and creative crossover, "Next year," he warns Johnny Black, "we might do it for two weeks."
SINEAD O'CONNOR, wearing just a pair of jeans and a lacy white bra, lounges in the mid-August sunshine outside Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios, nestling in a sylvan glade beneath the Wiltshire village of Box.
Rabbits peep out from surrounding hedges. Moorhen chicks dart for cover on the burbling stream. Van Morrison lurches past, scowling, shadowed by a constant companion in a dark business suit. If O'Connor sees them, she gives no indication. She and Morrison are here at Peter Gabriel's invitation, to join in a week of music making with the cream of the world's roots, folk and ethnic players.
Gabriel founded Real World Studios in 1986, among the ruins of an 18th century water mill. The studios, and the Real World record label, were a natural outgrowth of Gabriel's earlier involvement in setting up the WOMAD (World of Music Arts and Dance) organisation, from whose pool of talent many of Real World's artists are drawn. From the start, though, he wanted more than just a recording environment. "I imagined it like it has been this week," he says, between forkfuls of vegetarian stew, "with a cafe, a meeting place where musicians and technologists could drop in and work together, without the barriers and hassles of the music business." His fork describes a circle in the air, taking in the surrounding World War II Nissen hut, converted for one week only, into Lulu's Cafe.
Queuing for food nearby is Karl Wallinger of World Party, here to co-produce, with Gabriel, the week's musical cross-pollinations. At the next table, guitarists from Remmy Ongala's Orchestre Super Matimila, Tanzania's hottest exponents of ubongo beat, are laughing with members of New York's Holmes Brothers, a funky but sweet R&B quartet. In the corner, his ear blasted by Pakistani benga music blaring from a ghetto blaster, flamenco guitarist Juan Manuel Canizares trades ideas with Dave Ball, former Soft Cell mainstay, now of avant-garde electro-dance outfit The Grid. In the confines of Lulu's, Gabriel's dream seems possible. "The idea for this week," he says, "evolved last year when we had problems getting Real World artists into Real World Studios." The success of the complex, attracting artists of the stature of Tears For Fears and New Order who might occupy it for a month or more, meant that slotting in shorter sessions for the label's own artists was often impossible. "One of our directors, Amanda Jones, suggested blocking in a week during the WOMAD tour, when many of our artists would already be in the country."
For an outlay of around £200,000 to cover studio time, accommodation and fees, Real World Records hoped to produce about seven albums. The bulk of these were being realised, one per day, in the big oak-floored Wood Studio, given a night-club atmosphere by draping the walls with brightly painted banners. The performers played on ground level, while an audience of other musicians, technicians, friends, babies and the occasional dog hunkered down on cushions or perched on the catwalks above. The result, for The Holmes Brothers, Juan Canizares, Remmy Ongala, calypso king Roaring Lion, Colombian vocalist Toto la Momposina, and Russian folk ensemble The Terem Quartet, was one live-ish album each. The audience, however, was severely hampered by being asked to leave a brief gap after the end of each song, to make life easier at the editing stage, before bursting into a rapturous and totally natural round of applause.
Monday night's Holmes Brothers session felt like a spontaneous gospel hoe-down. "We gon' do a li'l toon that hits ya right where ya live," growled their perpetually grinning vocalist Wendell, as they launched into 'I Want Jesus To Walk With Me'. Even the presence of two BBC Rhythms Of The World camera crews, obtrusively poking their instruments up Popsy Holmes's nose or between Wendell's legs, failed to dispel what the session's producers insisted on calling the "good vibes".
When three guitarists from Remmy Ongala's band joined the Holmeses, making a total of five lead guitars, for a spirit-lifting Tanzania-meets-Nashville-via-New Orleans rendition of 'Will The Circle Be Unbroken', the camera crews were understandably fazed, incapable of working out from which direction the next blistering solo might come. The audience, without a thought for the editing suite, left no gap at the end before making its delight known.
THE WOOD Studio sits almost at the centre of the complex but, despite its hair-raising recording schedule, it produced only a fraction of the collaborations which Gabriel saw as the real "happening things" of the week. A stroll from one end of Real World to the other, early on Tuesday afternoon, gave a better indication that Gabriel's dream might yet come to pass.
On the wooden patio of Gabriel's Writing Room, secluded at the back of the complex, Japanese percussionist Joji Hiroto was playing 'Danny Boy' on a wooden shukahachi flute, watched intently by Chinese classical flautist Guo Yue. "I play 'Danny Boy'," laughed Joji, "because sometimes I play just to make people happy. This tune is very famous in Japan." Inside the Writing Room, ex-Clannad member Pol Brennan was preparing for 'River Of Life', a collaboration by all three, each playing a flute native to their homelands.
"Last night in Peter's studio upstairs," said Guo, "we did a piece written by Joji. Very powerful, very beautiful and Peter Gabriel sing, and the girl too, what's her name?" After some discussion, what's-her-name turned out to be Sinead O'Connor. Like many Real World artists, Guo's musical sphere is so removed from Western pop that superstar names like O'Connor and Morrison mean almost nothing to him. Everybody knows Gabriel, but to many he is the owner of Real World rather than a recording artist.
Not a hundred yards away, French Quebecoise folk group La Bottine Sourriante (The Smiling Half-Boot) fiddled and stomped for its own amusement under a spreading chestnut tree. A few paces further on, in Artists Reception, the control room for the week, the 83-year-old Roaring Lion leaned on his walking cane and shared a rum and coke with Amanda Jones. In an environment where T-shirts and ponytails were almost de rigueur for males, the Lion was startlingly dapper in his plum-coloured suit, broad-brimmed hat and extravagant tie.
The windows and walls of Artists Reception were plastered with an array of hand-crafted message posters. All singers please join the Holmes Brothers at 3.30 in the Wood Studio. Anyone going crop-circling please tell Sarah first. The Grid invite heavy breathers to the rehearsal room at 10.30.
From the open door of the Wood Room opposite drifted the sound of The Holmes Brothers singing 'Angels Watching Over Me'. Inside, producers Scott Billington and Andy Breslaw were rehearsing a scratch choir of back-up vocalists including Sheila Chandra (ex-Monsoon), Mari Boine Persen (from Lapland), Lui Sola (from China), Cosmas from Remmy Ongala's band and Karl Wallinger to do overdubs on to the basic track. A photographer in a "Cancel The Third World Debt" T-shirt snapped away as they sang.
Up three flights of stairs in the top floor Workroom, Peter Gabriel was playing back a track or, in Real World-speak, "laying some happening grooves on" a roomful of assorted musicians. Jah Wobble watched, bemused, as Gabriel struggled to communicate what he wanted to Mischa, bass-balalaika player of The Terem Quartet.
After lengthy negotiations, Gabriel shrugged his shoulders. "Forget it," he said. "Let Mischa surprise us. He's the expert." Tape rolled. Mischa went for it, nimbly plucking sub-basement notes from a balalaika so enormous that simply transporting it from Russia to Wiltshire had caused endless problems. As the final swirling notes faded, the room breathed a concerted sigh and Gabriel declared it to have been "really happening."
A few moments later he was heading for the door. "Milk run," he explained as he passed Mischa. The Workroom kitchenette had run out of milk and he was off to get some. The previous day, detecting a squeaky hinge on the Workroom door, it was Gabriel who procured an oilcan and fixed it.
Back downstairs, Remmy Ongala's band was soundchecking in a marquee specially erected on the lawn for a live concert intended to bring the week to an uptempo end by inviting all participants, plus the entire village of Box, to dance the evening away.
Beyond the marquee, in yet another converted Nissen hut, The Grid had hijacked Sheila Chandra from The Holmes Brothers' session to add wordless vocalisations to a hypnotic, swaying and swelling synthesizer track. "Perfect," exclaimed The Grid's Richard Norris, stunned by Chandra's perfect pitch, which enables her to deliver half and even quarter tones exactly where she wants them. "Now, can you do some harmonies to that – backwards?" While Chandra prepared herself to attempt harmonies on the reversed tape, The Grid's Dave Ball imparted the latest Morrison gossip. Earlier, Van had wandered into their hut to say hello to their engineer, Alex, with whom he had worked before. "Unfortunately," explained Ball, "we mistook him for a taxi driver, and kept him hanging around at the door."
MORRISON'S presence had changed the whole mood of the complex. Whenever more than two people gathered together, conversation turned to what he might be prepared to do ("Not a lot"), where he had last been sighted ("Down in Lulu's reading poetry aloud") and, most intriguing of all, who was The Business Suit ("Dunno"). Morrison had agreed to come, according to one Real Worlder, on a basis of "just hanging around and not doing anything", but obviously hopes of something more were high. On arrival, he had been ushered up into Gabriel's Workroom to listen to some "grooves". He grunted and shook his head until The Holmes Brothers were played. "I could connect with that," he announced.
For the next 12 hours Peter Gabriel delicately manoeuvred Morrison towards what Van frequently referred to as "them Homeless Brothers". Finally, just before midnight, beneath an almost full moon, Morrison lumbered into the middle of their session in the Writing Room, strapped on a guitar and declared his willingness to try something. As a crowd gathered on the porch outside the room's open French windows, Morrison led the Holmeses into Sam Cooke's 'That's Where It's At'. Two encouraging verses later he realised he couldn't remember the third. "Why don't you try 'Twistin' The Night Away'?" someone suggested. "Naw," countered Van, "Rod's already done that." Moments later he stalked off, evidently to ring home in Bath, have someone play the track, and relay the words.
By the time he returned, liggers on the porch included Peter Gabriel, Sinead O'Connor, freshly woken from sleep, and Dave Ball. About 10 takes later, Morrison declared himself happy with the track. "That's it. We can all go home now," he mumbled, to much relieved laughter. Gabriel slipped quietly away and reappeared minutes later with a tray of coffees, by which time Morrison was gone.
In Lulu's the following day, Karl Wallinger attempted to sum up the feeling of the week. "Phil Ramone says it's a musical health farm. I don't know. Maybe a musical summer school. We've even got the end-of-term concert coming up this afternoon. It's been crazy. When I think back over it, my memories are 65 per cent performances and a good 35 per cent just communication things, the ways people talked about music, like a flamenco guitarist explaining his song to a Senegalese drummer then both of them wondering if they could stick a Chinese flute on top."
THE END-of-term concert kicked off at 2.30. The sun shone, the security guards had nothing to do, the good people of Box drifted down under the bridge with their blankets and picnics. Sinead O'Connor had gone off crop-circling, Van was back home in Bath and the vibes were definitely happening.
"Maybe it's just because I've been up so late every night," said Gabriel, "but I've been very tearful lots of times this week. I love the quality of some of the things we've got. Maybe next year we'll do it for two weeks."
When Gabriel and Wallinger took the stage as back-up vocalists for Ugandan political songwriter Geoffrey Oryema, the crowd responded warmly, but it wasn't until darkness had descended and the crickets were chirping fit to drown out Remmy Ongala's Orchestre Super Matimila that Box got to its feet and danced.
© Johnny Black, 1991
P.S. Shortly after this feature was published, Van Morrison's representatives contacted Q magazine, threatening to sue the magazine unless my unflattering descriptions of the singer were apologised for or retracted. I'm proud to be able to report that the magazine took my side, supported my journalistic integrity, refused to bow down to the pressure and saw off the threat.
(Johnny Black, Aug 15, 2018)
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Johnny Black, Q, November 1991
One week this summer, Peter Gabriel's dream came true. Musicians of the world, from Sinead O'Connor and Van Morrison to stars of Lapland and Tanzania, met up at his Wiltshire studios for seven days of "happening grooves" and creative crossover, "Next year," he warns Johnny Black, "we might do it for two weeks."
SINEAD O'CONNOR, wearing just a pair of jeans and a lacy white bra, lounges in the mid-August sunshine outside Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios, nestling in a sylvan glade beneath the Wiltshire village of Box.
Rabbits peep out from surrounding hedges. Moorhen chicks dart for cover on the burbling stream. Van Morrison lurches past, scowling, shadowed by a constant companion in a dark business suit. If O'Connor sees them, she gives no indication. She and Morrison are here at Peter Gabriel's invitation, to join in a week of music making with the cream of the world's roots, folk and ethnic players.
Gabriel founded Real World Studios in 1986, among the ruins of an 18th century water mill. The studios, and the Real World record label, were a natural outgrowth of Gabriel's earlier involvement in setting up the WOMAD (World of Music Arts and Dance) organisation, from whose pool of talent many of Real World's artists are drawn. From the start, though, he wanted more than just a recording environment. "I imagined it like it has been this week," he says, between forkfuls of vegetarian stew, "with a cafe, a meeting place where musicians and technologists could drop in and work together, without the barriers and hassles of the music business." His fork describes a circle in the air, taking in the surrounding World War II Nissen hut, converted for one week only, into Lulu's Cafe.
Queuing for food nearby is Karl Wallinger of World Party, here to co-produce, with Gabriel, the week's musical cross-pollinations. At the next table, guitarists from Remmy Ongala's Orchestre Super Matimila, Tanzania's hottest exponents of ubongo beat, are laughing with members of New York's Holmes Brothers, a funky but sweet R&B quartet. In the corner, his ear blasted by Pakistani benga music blaring from a ghetto blaster, flamenco guitarist Juan Manuel Canizares trades ideas with Dave Ball, former Soft Cell mainstay, now of avant-garde electro-dance outfit The Grid. In the confines of Lulu's, Gabriel's dream seems possible. "The idea for this week," he says, "evolved last year when we had problems getting Real World artists into Real World Studios." The success of the complex, attracting artists of the stature of Tears For Fears and New Order who might occupy it for a month or more, meant that slotting in shorter sessions for the label's own artists was often impossible. "One of our directors, Amanda Jones, suggested blocking in a week during the WOMAD tour, when many of our artists would already be in the country."
For an outlay of around £200,000 to cover studio time, accommodation and fees, Real World Records hoped to produce about seven albums. The bulk of these were being realised, one per day, in the big oak-floored Wood Studio, given a night-club atmosphere by draping the walls with brightly painted banners. The performers played on ground level, while an audience of other musicians, technicians, friends, babies and the occasional dog hunkered down on cushions or perched on the catwalks above. The result, for The Holmes Brothers, Juan Canizares, Remmy Ongala, calypso king Roaring Lion, Colombian vocalist Toto la Momposina, and Russian folk ensemble The Terem Quartet, was one live-ish album each. The audience, however, was severely hampered by being asked to leave a brief gap after the end of each song, to make life easier at the editing stage, before bursting into a rapturous and totally natural round of applause.
Monday night's Holmes Brothers session felt like a spontaneous gospel hoe-down. "We gon' do a li'l toon that hits ya right where ya live," growled their perpetually grinning vocalist Wendell, as they launched into 'I Want Jesus To Walk With Me'. Even the presence of two BBC Rhythms Of The World camera crews, obtrusively poking their instruments up Popsy Holmes's nose or between Wendell's legs, failed to dispel what the session's producers insisted on calling the "good vibes".
When three guitarists from Remmy Ongala's band joined the Holmeses, making a total of five lead guitars, for a spirit-lifting Tanzania-meets-Nashville-via-New Orleans rendition of 'Will The Circle Be Unbroken', the camera crews were understandably fazed, incapable of working out from which direction the next blistering solo might come. The audience, without a thought for the editing suite, left no gap at the end before making its delight known.
THE WOOD Studio sits almost at the centre of the complex but, despite its hair-raising recording schedule, it produced only a fraction of the collaborations which Gabriel saw as the real "happening things" of the week. A stroll from one end of Real World to the other, early on Tuesday afternoon, gave a better indication that Gabriel's dream might yet come to pass.
On the wooden patio of Gabriel's Writing Room, secluded at the back of the complex, Japanese percussionist Joji Hiroto was playing 'Danny Boy' on a wooden shukahachi flute, watched intently by Chinese classical flautist Guo Yue. "I play 'Danny Boy'," laughed Joji, "because sometimes I play just to make people happy. This tune is very famous in Japan." Inside the Writing Room, ex-Clannad member Pol Brennan was preparing for 'River Of Life', a collaboration by all three, each playing a flute native to their homelands.
"Last night in Peter's studio upstairs," said Guo, "we did a piece written by Joji. Very powerful, very beautiful and Peter Gabriel sing, and the girl too, what's her name?" After some discussion, what's-her-name turned out to be Sinead O'Connor. Like many Real World artists, Guo's musical sphere is so removed from Western pop that superstar names like O'Connor and Morrison mean almost nothing to him. Everybody knows Gabriel, but to many he is the owner of Real World rather than a recording artist.
Not a hundred yards away, French Quebecoise folk group La Bottine Sourriante (The Smiling Half-Boot) fiddled and stomped for its own amusement under a spreading chestnut tree. A few paces further on, in Artists Reception, the control room for the week, the 83-year-old Roaring Lion leaned on his walking cane and shared a rum and coke with Amanda Jones. In an environment where T-shirts and ponytails were almost de rigueur for males, the Lion was startlingly dapper in his plum-coloured suit, broad-brimmed hat and extravagant tie.
The windows and walls of Artists Reception were plastered with an array of hand-crafted message posters. All singers please join the Holmes Brothers at 3.30 in the Wood Studio. Anyone going crop-circling please tell Sarah first. The Grid invite heavy breathers to the rehearsal room at 10.30.
From the open door of the Wood Room opposite drifted the sound of The Holmes Brothers singing 'Angels Watching Over Me'. Inside, producers Scott Billington and Andy Breslaw were rehearsing a scratch choir of back-up vocalists including Sheila Chandra (ex-Monsoon), Mari Boine Persen (from Lapland), Lui Sola (from China), Cosmas from Remmy Ongala's band and Karl Wallinger to do overdubs on to the basic track. A photographer in a "Cancel The Third World Debt" T-shirt snapped away as they sang.
Up three flights of stairs in the top floor Workroom, Peter Gabriel was playing back a track or, in Real World-speak, "laying some happening grooves on" a roomful of assorted musicians. Jah Wobble watched, bemused, as Gabriel struggled to communicate what he wanted to Mischa, bass-balalaika player of The Terem Quartet.
After lengthy negotiations, Gabriel shrugged his shoulders. "Forget it," he said. "Let Mischa surprise us. He's the expert." Tape rolled. Mischa went for it, nimbly plucking sub-basement notes from a balalaika so enormous that simply transporting it from Russia to Wiltshire had caused endless problems. As the final swirling notes faded, the room breathed a concerted sigh and Gabriel declared it to have been "really happening."
A few moments later he was heading for the door. "Milk run," he explained as he passed Mischa. The Workroom kitchenette had run out of milk and he was off to get some. The previous day, detecting a squeaky hinge on the Workroom door, it was Gabriel who procured an oilcan and fixed it.
Back downstairs, Remmy Ongala's band was soundchecking in a marquee specially erected on the lawn for a live concert intended to bring the week to an uptempo end by inviting all participants, plus the entire village of Box, to dance the evening away.
Beyond the marquee, in yet another converted Nissen hut, The Grid had hijacked Sheila Chandra from The Holmes Brothers' session to add wordless vocalisations to a hypnotic, swaying and swelling synthesizer track. "Perfect," exclaimed The Grid's Richard Norris, stunned by Chandra's perfect pitch, which enables her to deliver half and even quarter tones exactly where she wants them. "Now, can you do some harmonies to that – backwards?" While Chandra prepared herself to attempt harmonies on the reversed tape, The Grid's Dave Ball imparted the latest Morrison gossip. Earlier, Van had wandered into their hut to say hello to their engineer, Alex, with whom he had worked before. "Unfortunately," explained Ball, "we mistook him for a taxi driver, and kept him hanging around at the door."
MORRISON'S presence had changed the whole mood of the complex. Whenever more than two people gathered together, conversation turned to what he might be prepared to do ("Not a lot"), where he had last been sighted ("Down in Lulu's reading poetry aloud") and, most intriguing of all, who was The Business Suit ("Dunno"). Morrison had agreed to come, according to one Real Worlder, on a basis of "just hanging around and not doing anything", but obviously hopes of something more were high. On arrival, he had been ushered up into Gabriel's Workroom to listen to some "grooves". He grunted and shook his head until The Holmes Brothers were played. "I could connect with that," he announced.
For the next 12 hours Peter Gabriel delicately manoeuvred Morrison towards what Van frequently referred to as "them Homeless Brothers". Finally, just before midnight, beneath an almost full moon, Morrison lumbered into the middle of their session in the Writing Room, strapped on a guitar and declared his willingness to try something. As a crowd gathered on the porch outside the room's open French windows, Morrison led the Holmeses into Sam Cooke's 'That's Where It's At'. Two encouraging verses later he realised he couldn't remember the third. "Why don't you try 'Twistin' The Night Away'?" someone suggested. "Naw," countered Van, "Rod's already done that." Moments later he stalked off, evidently to ring home in Bath, have someone play the track, and relay the words.
By the time he returned, liggers on the porch included Peter Gabriel, Sinead O'Connor, freshly woken from sleep, and Dave Ball. About 10 takes later, Morrison declared himself happy with the track. "That's it. We can all go home now," he mumbled, to much relieved laughter. Gabriel slipped quietly away and reappeared minutes later with a tray of coffees, by which time Morrison was gone.
In Lulu's the following day, Karl Wallinger attempted to sum up the feeling of the week. "Phil Ramone says it's a musical health farm. I don't know. Maybe a musical summer school. We've even got the end-of-term concert coming up this afternoon. It's been crazy. When I think back over it, my memories are 65 per cent performances and a good 35 per cent just communication things, the ways people talked about music, like a flamenco guitarist explaining his song to a Senegalese drummer then both of them wondering if they could stick a Chinese flute on top."
THE END-of-term concert kicked off at 2.30. The sun shone, the security guards had nothing to do, the good people of Box drifted down under the bridge with their blankets and picnics. Sinead O'Connor had gone off crop-circling, Van was back home in Bath and the vibes were definitely happening.
"Maybe it's just because I've been up so late every night," said Gabriel, "but I've been very tearful lots of times this week. I love the quality of some of the things we've got. Maybe next year we'll do it for two weeks."
When Gabriel and Wallinger took the stage as back-up vocalists for Ugandan political songwriter Geoffrey Oryema, the crowd responded warmly, but it wasn't until darkness had descended and the crickets were chirping fit to drown out Remmy Ongala's Orchestre Super Matimila that Box got to its feet and danced.
© Johnny Black, 1991
P.S. Shortly after this feature was published, Van Morrison's representatives contacted Q magazine, threatening to sue the magazine unless my unflattering descriptions of the singer were apologised for or retracted. I'm proud to be able to report that the magazine took my side, supported my journalistic integrity, refused to bow down to the pressure and saw off the threat.
(Johnny Black, Aug 15, 2018)