Paul Rodgers, Simon Kirke, and Studio Drama [Highlight From Episode 341]

In the world of music production, sometimes even the pros hit roadblocks. Veteran engineer Digby Smith reminisces about the time Paul Rodgers got fed up during a Free recording session, and how Simon Kirke came to the rescue.

Listen to Episode 341 - Behind The Boards with Zeppelin, Marley, McCartney & Clapton with Engineer Digby Smith

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here's a highlight from a recent episode of Booked on Rock.
He is the author of the book one, two, three four,
The Life and Times of a Recording Studio Engineer. It
is Digby Smith. His career spans four decades, beginning at
nineteen years old when he joined Island Studios in London
as a staff engineer. You mentioned Free, such an underrated band.

(00:20):
Paul Rodgers later of Bad Company fame the late great
Paul Kasoff on guitar, Simon Kirk of Bad Company as
well on drums, Andy Fraser on Base. You're a big
fan by the time you worked with them on Free
at Last, the album from seventy two. Talk about your
experience working with Free. Paul Kossoff had your back in
one incident where things got heated with you and Paul Rodgers.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah again, just quick briefly dipping back into the late
sixties there, I I'd caught a number of Island records
in my record collection at home, and amongst them with
the first couple of Free albums, so I was a
massive fan. And then yeah, zoom forward a couple of
years and I'm actually in the studio with these guys

(01:04):
and those it's those pinch yourself, moments that you remember,
and a great bunch of guys. We were all about
the same age, late teen's early twenties, had an affinity
to their music straight away. I assisted initially. My first
involvement with Free was on the Highway album as an

(01:28):
assistant engineer to the late great Andy Johns. When they
came back to do their next album, Free at Last,
they asked if I'd sit behind the desk and be
the main engineer, and you know, invariably late night sessions,
working right through the nights of summer. A couple of
weeks into the album, everybody's getting a bit, you know,

(01:49):
it's the pressures on. We can sense from the label
that they want this record to so it can get
very emotional in the creative atmosphear of the recording studio
and I don't know what is it. Two three o'clock
in the morning. Paul Rodgers is by the microphone and
he's about to do a vocal on one of the tracks,

(02:11):
and I'm fiddling around on the desk getting the headphone
balance for him. That he's happy. Always had plenty of drums,
plenty of bass, and worth noting Cossy would never put
his lead guitar solo work on until the vocal was recorded.
That was his golden rule, he said, I never I

(02:33):
always want to wait till the lead vocal has been sung.
Then I'll put my guitar parts on and work my
weave my way around it. Which was that's how Costy was.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah. Interesting.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah. So Paul's out there at the microphone. We're getting
ready to run the tape, checking the mic level, and
I'm filling around, maybe with a bit of reverb in
the headphones. Anyway, I obviously made the mistake of putting
too much reverb on Paul's voice, so he flung the

(03:06):
headphones off his head, threw them onto the floor, came
storming into the control room and eyeballed me and finger
pointed me, and he just lost it. He said, Digby,
don't and I won't repeat the language, but essentially what
the message was, Digbi, don't ever put that much riverb

(03:27):
on my voice in the headphones again. I can't sing
with that much reverb. And he was quite aggressive, would
be too strong a word, but he was vehement in
his protestations. Little Paul coss Off literally stood between me
and Paul Rogers and COSSI said to Paul, he said,

(03:51):
don't ever talk to Digby like that again. He said,
Digby is the most important man in the room. He's
capturing what we play and what we feel and how
we go about it, and he's encouraging us. So don't
ever do that again, Paul Rogers, I mean, I mean

(04:11):
short of us, but all well enough. It was like
point made, and I said, oh, sorry, Paul, I want
I want to do that with the river beginning. He said, oh,
that's okay. I didn't mean to share. So we had
group hugs and and everything was great, and Paul went
back out to the vocal microphone. I switched all the

(04:32):
rever Buffy's vocal just to be sure, and Paul then
delivered the definitive vocals.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
And all was, well, yeah, that just shows, you know,
the pressure that everybody is under to come up with it,
to come up with just a good recording, and the
artists want to make make sure everything sounds good. You
want to make sure everything sounds good, and those things
can happen. Credit to all three of you guys, or
actually Cass mostly right, I mean he's the one who

(05:01):
came in.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
Absolutely what a what a what a gentleman he was.
I had another time with Simon the drummer. He was
just to say, after that instance, it's amazing. Sometimes, you know,
like with any relationships, sometimes you know, words are said,
it breaks, it breaks the tension, and it sometimes it's

(05:25):
like a release fell and everyone's the better for it.
There was another time on a track that had sort
of two sections to it, and when it was at
the end of the first section, it was a sort
of a two bar paurs or one bar pause, and
then Simon's drum fill and then we go into the

(05:46):
outro section of the song. I forget the title. The
name escapes me, but we got the track all recorded
and all the guitar overdubs and the vocals, and it's
all good to mix. The idea was we were just
going to overdub some tambourine on the track. Rather than
one person played the tambourine, the idea was that three

(06:06):
people were going to play a tambourine each out in
the live room. So I had to set up like
three or even a couple of ambient mics, three or
four microphones and record this orchestral tambourine performance in stereo.
So such was the desk and the routing of the
signal path that there was only groups one and two

(06:30):
that you could patch into the stereo. But I didn't
want to record on tracks one and two because that
was Simon's drums. So what I was supposed to do
is come out of the patch baying out of groups
one and two and plug into I don't know tracks
thirteen and fourteen or something. Of course I did all that,
but mistakenly, again it's probably four or five o'clock in

(06:53):
the morning, we're all a bit the worse for wear.
I put tracks one and two into record, and of
course when it came to that part of the song
and there were two, three and four, and I hit
record to record, the tambourines and Simon's drums disappeared. Because
I did I did, I erase the base trum and
the snare. Oh my god, I hit I hit stop

(07:15):
on the table shoes as quickly as I could, and
saw my life flash before me. I'm dead. I am dead.
This is it's been nice working here lasted. It's going
to be back back to the bedroom and the cello
tape and the scissors, and and I think it was
something said, why do you stop tape? Digby? I said,

(07:36):
I just didn't know. I thought, well, you just got
to Sometimes in the world of engineer, and if if
you make a mistake, if it's pilot error, you can
sometimes bluff your way around it and say, oh the
channel switch cut out, or it's it didn't go and record,
you know, the button's faulty, or but this there was

(07:57):
no way out, Eric, there was no ad to fess.
So I called them up. I said, can you come
back into the control room, guys, And Simon said, what's happened?
And I just said to Simon, I thought, I just
got to tell him. I said, I've erased your drums.
Oh boy. And I thought, he's a tough looking guy, Simon,

(08:19):
you know, and he's fit, you know, behind the kit there. Yeah,
I just thought, this is it, man, this is it.
Simon said, the drum mics still set up, Dickwie and
I looked out into the into the live room and
I said, yeah, they are. And I looked on the desk. Yeah,
all the drum faders were still where they were. Simon said,

(08:41):
I'll rerecord him. He said, I wasn't very happy with
the drumming. On the outro of the track. Anyway, he says,
I don't worry about it, Dickwie, It's fine, he said,
we all make mistakes, man, And he just walked out,
put his headphones on. I wind back it recording. Simon
just replaced the drums effortlessly, faultlessly.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
One take a huge sigh of relief, A huge sigh
of relief.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
And uh and and I kind of, if I wasn't already,
I felt a bonding with with Simon from then, and
I've kept in touch with him, you know, casually, over
the years. And he's still working and playing and teaching
and stuff. And he's another what a what a gentleman,