We just worked on the live backing tracks and overdubbed the guide vocals." Village Life However, by the time we completed the eight-track demos, we didn't have any of the parts that would be overdubbed on the finished record. "The home demos of each song were pretty much all keyboard-based - vocal and piano or vocal and Wurlitzer - and then the whole band would run through them. "As it turned out, this was a good opportunity to work out the arrangements for most of the backing tracks - 'Take The Long Way Home' wouldn't arrive until much later in the project - and we even assembled the running order for the album. "I went to LA thinking we were going to start recording, but nothing was quite ready, so we ended up doing very, very basic eight-track demos for the whole album," Peter Henderson recalls. It was just one of nine new compositions demoed at Southcombe Studios, a rehearsal space within the band's management office in Burbank, California, during late April and early May of 1978. Courtesy of producer Ken Scott and concert sound engineer Russell Pope, the British five-piece had established a reputation for lush, catchy, carefully crafted pop, and it was in the middle of a post-tour break that Roger Hodgson wrote the lyrics to 'The Logical Song', a wistful four-minute ode to separation from the simple, innocent joys of childhood and the confusion this engenders. "Then I was asked to engineer the follow-up, and ended up co-producing with the band." Photo: Russell Popeīy 1978, Supertramp - then comprising keyboardist/vocalist Rick Davies and his songwriting partner guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Roger Hodgson, together with vocalist/saxophonist/woodwind player John Helliwell, bass player Dougie Thomson and drummer Bob Siebenberg - already had five albums behind them, and hit singles like 'Dreamer', 'Bloody Well Right' and 'Give A Little Bit'. "Geoff Emerick had been asked to engineer Even In The Quietest Moments, and when he couldn't do it I ended up doing the recording and he ended up doing the mix," Henderson explains. The following year he nabbed his biggest album production credit to date, collaborating with Supertramp on Breakfast In America. You'd do adverts and record orchestras, and as time went on you'd be trusted to work with better and better artists." Going SouthĪfter engineering Supertramp's Even In The Quietest Moments and Frank Zappa's Sheik Yerbouti, Henderson went freelance in 1978 and co-produced the Climax Blues Band's Gold Plated and a Tubes live album. The thing is, when you started off at AIR, you'd usually spend about 18 months assisting and then overnight you would become an engineer. "I don't think it was one of my finer moments. "I listened to that a few years later and it sounded like it had been recorded direct to cassette," Henderson remarks. That having been said, Peter Henderson's very first engineering gig was alongside another Beatles alumnus, producer George Martin, on the 1976 Jeff Beck album Wired. ![]() Everything had to be performed, and he'd always say that he liked the sound to jump out of the speakers." I remember one of my first engineering jobs, working with Paul McCartney on Wings At The Speed Of Sound - he'd do two vocal takes and ask, 'Which is the better one?' And when he played guitar, he'd really lean into it and give it everything he got. We had Neve consoles and Fairchild limiters, and everything leaned towards performance. There'd be D90 on the snare and probably D12 on the bass drum, and that was it. "He would put two 4038 ribbon mics over the drums and wouldn't even mic the toms. Photo: Russell Pope"When I began working with Geoff the standard was 16-track," Henderson recalls. During that time, Henderson also worked with other seasoned pros such as Bill Price and John Punter, yet it was Emerick who taught him the fundamentals, from recording vocals to entire orchestras, while working with artists such as America and Robin Trower. ![]() Peter Henderson started out as an assistant at AIR Studios on Oxford Street in 1973, and quickly teamed up with Grammy Award-winning engineer Geoff Emerick, who served as his mentor over the next couple of years. Yet when he handed in the masters, Henderson was convinced that Supertramp's Breakfast In America would finish his career. Producer/engineer Peter Henderson spent nine months recording an album that neither he nor the A&M label could afford to fail. From left to right: Roger Hodgson, Peter Henderson and Rick Davies (rear) at the Village Recorder during the recording of the Breakfast In America album.
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