Fact #97629
When:
Short story:
When The Rolling Stones record Not Fade Away for their first album at Regent Sound Studios in London, UK, Gene Pitney drops in to see them.
Full article:
Keith Richards (guitarist, Rolling Stones) : We did our early records on a 2-track Revox in a room insulated with egg cartons at Regent Sound. It was like a little demo in Tin Pan Alley, as it used to be called. Denmark Street in Soho. It was all done on a 2-track Revox that he had on the wall. We used to think, Oh, this is a recording studio, huh? This is what they're like? A tiny little backroom. Under those primitive conditions it was easy to make the kind of sound we got on our first album and the early singles, but hard to make a much better one.
Gene Pitney : My publicist was Andrew Loog Oldham who managed the Stones, so we hung out and got to know each other very well.
I was on my way home from Paris and I stopped in London for one day. Andrew called me at the hotel and said, 'You've got to help me. It's one of those days where they hate each other and I can't get them to record anything.'
I had some duty-free brandy and I went over and told them that it was my birthday and that they should join me in a glass of cognac. That broke the ice, and then Phil Spector stopped by too. The credits on the LP say that Phil played maracas, but what he was actually playing was an empty cognac bottle with an American half-dollar, holding one in one hand and clinking it with the other.
I played piano and they came off with a very big hit in Not Fade Away.
Charlie Watts (drummer, Rolling Stones) : We did it with a Bo Diddley beat, which at the time was very avant garde for a white band to be playing Bo Diddley's stuff. It was a very popular rhythm for us in clubs; looking at it from the drumming point of view. So we did it in this slightly different way than Buddy Holly did it.
Bill Wyman (bassist, Rolling Stones) : The rhythm thing was formed basically around the Buddy Holly thing. We brought the rhythm up and emphasized it. Holly had used that Bo Diddley trademark beat on his version, but because he was only using bass, drums and guitar, the rhythm element is sort of a throwaway. Holly played it lightly. We just got into it more and put the Bo Diddley beat up front.
Andrew Oldham (manager, Rolling Stones) : Although Not Fade Away was a Buddy Holly song, I considered it to be like the first song Mick and Keith wrote, in that they picked the concept of applying that Bo Diddley thing to it. The way they arranged it was the beginning of the shaping of them as songwriters. From then on they wrote...
What basically made the record was that whole Bo Diddley acoustic guitar thrust. You heard the whole record in one room.
Bill Wyman (bassist, Rolling Stones) : On the first album, we cut everything in mono. The band had to record more or less live in the studio so what was on our record was more or less our act, what we played on the ballroom and club circuits. It was really just the show you did onstage recorded in one take, as it should be.
Tweet this Fact
Gene Pitney : My publicist was Andrew Loog Oldham who managed the Stones, so we hung out and got to know each other very well.
I was on my way home from Paris and I stopped in London for one day. Andrew called me at the hotel and said, 'You've got to help me. It's one of those days where they hate each other and I can't get them to record anything.'
I had some duty-free brandy and I went over and told them that it was my birthday and that they should join me in a glass of cognac. That broke the ice, and then Phil Spector stopped by too. The credits on the LP say that Phil played maracas, but what he was actually playing was an empty cognac bottle with an American half-dollar, holding one in one hand and clinking it with the other.
I played piano and they came off with a very big hit in Not Fade Away.
Charlie Watts (drummer, Rolling Stones) : We did it with a Bo Diddley beat, which at the time was very avant garde for a white band to be playing Bo Diddley's stuff. It was a very popular rhythm for us in clubs; looking at it from the drumming point of view. So we did it in this slightly different way than Buddy Holly did it.
Bill Wyman (bassist, Rolling Stones) : The rhythm thing was formed basically around the Buddy Holly thing. We brought the rhythm up and emphasized it. Holly had used that Bo Diddley trademark beat on his version, but because he was only using bass, drums and guitar, the rhythm element is sort of a throwaway. Holly played it lightly. We just got into it more and put the Bo Diddley beat up front.
Andrew Oldham (manager, Rolling Stones) : Although Not Fade Away was a Buddy Holly song, I considered it to be like the first song Mick and Keith wrote, in that they picked the concept of applying that Bo Diddley thing to it. The way they arranged it was the beginning of the shaping of them as songwriters. From then on they wrote...
What basically made the record was that whole Bo Diddley acoustic guitar thrust. You heard the whole record in one room.
Bill Wyman (bassist, Rolling Stones) : On the first album, we cut everything in mono. The band had to record more or less live in the studio so what was on our record was more or less our act, what we played on the ballroom and club circuits. It was really just the show you did onstage recorded in one take, as it should be.