[April 2013] The Stone Roses documentary Made of Stone has a confirmed release date for early summer 2013. It’s brought back memories of traveling down to Manchester and my short stint helping Martin Hannett at Strawberry Studios.
In March 1985, I’d just turned 19 and hadn’t spent much time in Manchester. I’d finished studying music at Huddersfield Technical College, married my girlfriend [I know, it’s too young to get married] and enrolled on a sound recording course at the School of Sound Recording that had been established by John Breakell.
School of Sound Recording was based in a basement on Tariff Street in Manchester’s Northern Quarter and was one of the UK’s first sound engineering and music production schools. Over the years, the school had different names including SSR and Spirit Studios.
By the late March of 1985, it had only been established a few months, the tuition fee was £40.00 a week, and the lessons were on a Tuesday’s and Thursday’s. I attended the lectures and got straight off as soon as they’d finished as I normally had a gig to get to.
The guy teaching the course was Tim Oliver who looked about the same age as me at the time, but as it turns out, he’s around seven years older. Although still relatively young [26], he was very good and had a great understanding of recording techniques and equipment.
Tim went on to have a high-profile career as a producer, engineer, songwriter, arranger, and musician who went on to work on all kind of projects with the likes of Sinead O’Connor, Cara Dillon, Electric Soft Parade, and Robert Plant.
Whilst at School of Sound Recording, I heard there was an opening to do some work with a guy called Martin Hannett, so I immediately called him. Martin asked what I’d done in the past and I told him about my studies and the bits of recording I’d done, which included lots of mix edits for DJ’s and a breakdance tape that had done quite well. When I say “quite well”, it was only quite well by the standards of a 19 year old!
Martin told me to meet him for a chat in The Waterloo – a pub opposite Strawberry Studios in Stockport – and a date was set for the following day after I’d finished at Tariff Street.
Before I met Martin, I thought I’d try and find out a bit more about him, so I went to see Mike Hargreaves who owned the Disco Music Centre record shop in Morecambe who knew of Martin, and gave me an article about when Martin had been voted ‘producer of the year’ by a music magazine.
After dropping out of a chemistry degree to pursue music, Martin made it as a talented Mancunian producer who owned part of Factory Records; produced bands [Joy Division, New Order, Buzzcocks, Jilted John, U2, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark]; played bass [in Sad Cafe amongst others], and had been John Cooper Clarke‘s manager.
I was a little worried that I wouldn’t be up to the job as a junior for Martin as Strawberry Studios was a legendary studio with the likes of Neil Sedaka, 10cc, Joy Division, The Buzzcocks, and the Syd Lawrence Orchestra all recording there.
My initial meeting with Martin lasted all of thirty seconds as Martin was drinking with friends in the very smokey Waterloo, and he told me to meet him the following afternoon at the studio at 3pm.
The next day, I arrived at the studio early and Martin was already there. From what I can remember, this was ‘the only time’ he was ever there before me. I’d driven for over an hour, I’d agreed to work for free – to gain experience – and the 19 year old me thought the studio was amazing!
I was quite surprised at Martin’s reaction to me when I arrived ‘for work’ on the very first day at Strawberry [remember, I wasn’t being paid] because he was very tense towards me. Within a few sessions, I realised he was like this with most people, and in time, he was very nice to me.
Sadly, I often saw a darker side to Martin and after been around a lot of heavy drinkers when I was young (my dad was an alcoholic which is why I’m tea total) it was clear that Martin liked a drink – and more – and I had a good understanding of how to deal with him because of the childhood I’d had with my dad.
At the time, Martin had recorded a young Irish band called Blue in Heaven and wanted to make some edits and cuts to experiment with. It seemed a very high profile job to me as the band was signed to Island Records and Martin told me that Bono of U2 had chosen them as one of his favourite.
Martin knew Bono because he’d recorded U2’s single 11 O’clock Tick Tock in 1980. In 1985, Blue in Heaven released their first album All The Gods Men which – apart from one track – was produced by Martin. To me, the album had a thick texture, heavy bass, and a strange treatment of the vocal, but I liked it, it was different.
On one day, Martin sent me to Alan Cheetham’s Audio Services in Disley for 2″ tape and my future friend Tim Eastwood was working there. Martin owed Audio Services money and they told me they wouldn’t release anything until Martin had paid up… which sounded understandable.
When I got back to Strawberry (empty handed) I told Martin and he told me to go back and tell them he wanted the tape. So like a fool, I drove back to Disley, told the sales guy that Martin wanted the tape, and I think he thought I was an idiot! When I got back to Strawberry, Martin went mad with me and that was the end of that day.
When I got to know Martin better, I found him to be a very talented, charming, proud and intelligent man… but who thought the World against him. Despite some unpleasant out-bursts, Martin was clearly very fond of Steve Hopkins, his previous right hand man in the studio; and Howard Jones, his partner in Thinline records.
He was also very fond of Lindsay Reade, who left Factory earlier that year after her second stint there; Deborah Curtis, widow of the late Ian Curtis of Joy Division fame; Julia Adamson, a lovely lady who’d done some work with him; and of course Wendy [his partner] and her daughter.
Martin didn’t like The Hacienda and didn’t have a good word to say about it. It was a ‘no no’ to mention it, and at the time, he didn’t seem to like anyone involved with it. The decision to build the club had clearly upset Martin as he wanted the money to be invested into a studio for the Factory roster, which sounded fair enough to me.
As soon as Martin found out the club was opening, he planned his exit from Factory Records and planned legal proceedings against his former partners. By the time I met Martin, everything seemed to have settled down but the whole Hacienda subject was still a touchy subject and had clearly left a bitter taste in Martin’s mouth.
Whilst doing the Blue in Heaven edits, I realised why Martin needed help in the studio, he had a slight hand tremble and was un-steady with the blade on the splicing block. It felt sad that he needed help due to a problem like this but I was happy to help and grateful to be getting the experience.
Over the few weeks, I really warmed to Martin, even though these were very dark times for him. He seemed more open with me than some – probably because I was naive, wasn’t living in Manchester, or in the Manchester crowd – and I was also willing to do a three hour round trip to Stockport for nothing more than experience.
Towards the end of doing the ‘Blue in Heaven’ edits, Martin had been talking about setting up a label to rival to Factory Records and Howard Jones [Martin’s manager friend who’d been the boss of The Hacienda] called in to see him at Strawberry for a chat.
Even though Howard had worked at The Hacienda, he’d left the club so wasn’t in the ‘Factory team’, and was in ‘Martin’s team’ and persona grata. Martin said they’d decided to set up a label, but I think with hindsight that they’d already decided to do it months ago.
Martin had negotiated ‘free studio time’ at Strawberry and had just started recording The Stone Roses sometine around the time I first met him. He told me they rehearsed at the School of Sound Recording rehearsal rooms, although I’d never seen them there.
After the ‘Blue in Heaven’ edits were complete, I’d been in touch with Martin a few times to see if there was anything else I could get involved with, but it was summer and he didn’t need me. Martin got back to me a couple of weeks later to tell me that I could do some edits soon and he was now able to give me some “petrol money”, which I was delighted about.
On the first day back in Strawberry, I realised that Martin seemed more shaky than before – but I may have just been more aware of his shake by this point – and there was a couple more youngsters doing stuff in the studio for him, who I hadn’t seen before.
Martin immediately started moaning that the The Stone Roses hadn’t enough material for the project he wanted to do with them, so there wasn’t going to be as much work for me as he’d said on the phone.
Martin then dropped the bomb shell that he had to finish all the edits on the tracks within a matter of days because Factory Records were releasing the debut single Delightful by the Happy Mondays; and Martin and Howard’s new label Thin Line Records [Martin always wrote it as Thinline, i.e. all one word] wanted to release their first single on the same day.
In all, Martin had recorded five tracks with The Stone Roses but by the time it came to editing, he had got it down to two. The two tracks that made it on to the double A-side release were called So Young and Tell Me.
The release was released on the new label Thin Line Records, the catalogue number was THIN001, and the sound was not the The Stone Roses sound of the 90’s, these tracks were more punky, gothy, reverby, and shouty.
To be fair, I can slightly understand why the band later disowned the single after hearing what they were capable of in their later careers. I think Martin and Howard only shipped about twelve hundred copies and Martin told me that the single had been a disaster commercially, so I’m not exactly sure how many were actually sold.
As I drove into Manchester over the following weeks, I saw quite a bit of Stone Roses stuff all over the place, but mainly in spray paint! The release did well in the Manchester record shops and got a few reviews in the local press. City Life said it wasn’t very Manchester but Zigzag thought Martin’s production was good, so he was pleased with that.
In real terms, I did little to contribute to this release – apart from offering a steady pair of hands for cutting and splicing – but I really got to like Martin. He had some great stories about his days recording at Cargo, Arrow, and Central Sound but there’s no doubt that there was a very unpredictable side to his personality.
After all the bad mouthing he did about the folks at The Hacienda and Factory Records, I was surprised when The Stone Roses – just before the ‘So Young’ release – played The Hacienda and Martin was did their live sound. If I’d had as much bitterness towards a place or its people as Martin showed, I’d have never gone near them. It was all a bit strange and it seemed a nice time for me to move on.
I rarely saw Martin after this. I occasionally – when working in Manchester – would call into the studio and I once called at his home in Chorlton. After I started Promenade Music, he came up to see me the year after [1990] and I found him to be a very different man to how I remembered him only four or five years earlier. Maybe I was a bit older and wiser, maybe he was better out of the studio, but whatever it was, he was much calmer.
Martin’s family meant much more to him than I remembered or realised in 1985/6. He told me that him and Wendy now had a little boy called James – and he was clearly very proud of him – and how lovely his step daughter was with James. I told him my wife was pregnant and he seemed so pleased for me. He clearly thought a lot about Deborah and Ian Curtis’ little daughter Natalie who would have been too young to remember her daddy… how sad is that.
By 1990, Martin had put a lot of weight on since I remembered him in 1985/86 and so had I! He told me he was clean and had made up with the Factory Records crowd. He had even worked with them on a few projects including the 1998 studio album called Bummed by the Happy Mondays.
He was excited that he had worked with a bunch of new people, especially a young engineer / producer called John Pennington who I knew of because he’d worked with a band called the Milltown Brothers, and three of the band [Matt Nelson, singer; Nian Brindle, drummer; and James Fraser, bassist] were local lads who had gone to our local Lancaster Royal Grammar School.
Sadly, the last time I saw Martin was that autumn of 1990 in Promenade Music… he died of heart failure in the April of 1991, aged 42.
Martin didn’t have the same success in the mid 80’s as he had in the 70’s. Steve Hopkins – who I would say was Martin’s closest friend – told me that Martin and Wendy’s son James went to University and I hope James knows how proud his dad was of him. Howard Jones didn’t continue managing The Stone Roses for long after the single, I believe he didn’t have a contract so they walked.
Don’t know if it’s true, but The Stone Roses’ next manager Gareth Evans was in his car with the band one day, threw a load of their So Young / Tell Me singles out of the window, and reversed over them. Ironically, those singles now sell for about £75 to collectors [Updated 2024: Price is now £250] and the front cover was great, it was a smashed up old radio.
Although I never met any of The Stone Roses in 1985 – as all the recording was done before I helped edit – the band have occasionally cropped up in my life. My good friend, Paul Birch at Revolver Records put a single out but the band thre paint at Paul and damaged his car, so that was that. Lindsay Reade, an incredibly intelligent articulate lady became the bands co-manager with Gareth Evans.
Neil Claxton – my co-founder and co-director in Faith & Hope Records – was the remix producer for Stone Corporation Vox mix for The Stone Roses Begging You single that was released in 1995 on Geffen Records. In 1998 Neil was asked to do a Mint Royale remix of the track Elephant Stone for The Stone Roses – The Remixes album for the Silvertone label. This ‘Elephant Stone’ remix also appeared on Neil’s own Mint Royale album Pop Is which was released on our Faith & Hope record label.
Even though I didn’t meet Tony Wilson in 1985 [the founder of Factory records who Martin moaned about constantly], when I did get to know him a few years later, he wasn’t as Martin portrayed. Tony was one of the most supportive people I’ve come across who wanted all ‘Manchester’ businesses to do well. He would go out of his way to network for my success and became a good friend and mentor of mine before his death in 2007, aged just 57.
RIP Martin
Written April 2013