Play it, Sarm

Basing Street Studios was where everyone from Bob Marley to Queen recorded some of their best-known songs. Jonathan Wingate reminisces

Above: Basing Street

Flick through any decent record collection and you’ll see the words ‘recorded at Basing Street Studios’ in the credits of a huge range of classic albums. From The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin to The Eagles, The Who and local heroes The Clash, they’ve all walked through Basing Street’s hallowed doors.
 Anyone who has ever spent any time in a studio will know that, for the most part, they’re pretty unremarkable places, yet a few seem to have something special about them. It’s not the state-of-the-art equipment that makes Basing Street so ineffably cool, more the fact that much of the soundtrack to our lives has been recorded in this building. These days, the studio known as Sarm West is owned by producer Trevor Horn, famous for his groundbreaking work with Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Seal and the Pet Shop Boys, among others.
Located between Portobello Road and All Saints Road, the building was a church before it was bought by Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records. Within a few short years, Island became the first important independent label in Notting Hill, and having made its name releasing
an endless stream of ska, rocksteady and reggae records, they widened their scope and put out a series of now legendary folk, prog and glam rock music. During the Island years, Basing Street Studios was used by all of their own acts, most notably Nick Drake, John Martyn Fairport Convention, Free, Mott The Hoople, Roxy Music, Traffic, Cat Stevens and Bob Marley and the Wailers.
Like many people, my first glimpse of the place was on Sunday 25 November 1984, the unforgettable day when Bob Geldof assembled the cream of Britain’s pop stars for the recording of Band Aid’s Do They Know
It’s Christmas?.
“Midge and I were the first to arrive in the studio on the day of the recording,” recalls Geldof. “The studio was surrounded by TV and press photographers. ‘How’s it going, Bob?’ ‘Well, it isn’t yet,’ I said nervously, ‘because we’re the only ones here. We’re just hoping that the rest turn up.’ I had no certainly that anyone would come. They said they would, but maybe it was just so I’d leave
them alone.
“It was an odd sensation watching them all drift in. It was all very low-key. Most people looked as if they
had just got out of bed, which by and large they had. I remember seeing Sting strolling up the street half-reading his Sunday paper. I looked around and saw that the room held most of the stars of British pop music. They looked
like a bunch of yobs down the pub on a Sunday lunchtime.
“We finished at 7am. Boy George said being there ‘was like Christmas itself.’ Sting said, ‘You can never send enough money. You have to give of yourself.’ It was a very emotional record. I thought of all those people, but mostly I thought of why they’d done it. It had been a monumental day. There was never one second of rancorous feeling. Inside that room had been the single greatest collection of contemporary musicians in British history. The total security had been the artists’ liaison man from Phonogram records, who had stood at the door as people came in.”
These days it is known to those who work there as The Blue Building, and I was lucky enough to work for Horn’s ZTT Records for a couple of years, which meant that almost every day, I went to the studio restaurant for lunch. There was a seemingly endless stream of megastars in and out of the place the whole time – and although they were there to work rather than hang out, I remember a few fascinating conversations with some of the studio’s clients, who were generally very much at ease once ensconced behind the safety and anonymity of the studio doors.
One of my fondest memories was of an afternoon I spent just chatting with George Michael, a few weeks after his infamous arrest for ‘lewd conduct’ in a Los Angeles park. “I’ll wait here for a moment,” he winked at me as I stood next to him at the urinals in the toilet. “It wouldn’t do your reputation any good if someone sees me walking out of here straight after you,” he giggled. Ice duly broken, we sat drinking tea and talked for three hours straight. Sarm is that kind of place.
Madonna was an altogether different proposition – shrouded in mystery, the only way you knew she was actually there was when you’d see her driver parked outside in her huge Mercedes. Although I generally witnessed very little pop star petulance during my time there, everyone apart from the heads of departments at ZTT were politely asked not to hang out in the studio while she was recording. Those of us who were actually allowed to breath the same air as her were told in no uncertain terms not to make direct eye contact with her at any time.
Although it is now known as one of the most state of the art recording studios in the world, the past is ever present in Basing Street. Nobody else at ZTT seemed particularly impressed at the time, but I used to take enormous pride in telling people that they were sitting on Bob Marley’s
sofa during our long meetings.
This thing was quite literally the length of a stretch limo, and had been rescued from Marley’s old
room above the studios, and although it had been re-covered since his time at Basing Street, you could
still feel the great man’s spirit as you sunk into it. If you lifted up the blue cover, you could also see the many burn marks from the hundreds of spliffs he had smoked
as he sat there writing some of his most famous songs.

www.sarmstudios.com