STRAWBERRY RECORDING STUDIOS, STOCKPORT, 1967-1976

In the mid-1960's, when Merseyside had been scoured and all its pop-groups discovered, one area of the North West was on the verge of beginning a long and fruitful role within the pop-music industry. The unlikely setting of a Stockport backstreet was set to play host to a wide range of local, national and international stars who would arrive in the town to record in the relaxed and friendly atmosphere of Strawberry Recording Studios.

The person responsible for starting Strawberry was Peter Tattersall who, until the 1980's, remained managing-director of the studio. In the early 1960's, although working in the furniture business, Tattersall spent much of his spare time performing with local pop groups. Through this he came to know the famous Brian Epstein who offered him a job as road manager to the group Billy J Kramer and The Dakotas. This meant that Tattersall spent a fair amount of time at London's Abbey Road recording studio and it was here that his initial interest in the recording process was born. By 1967, tired of the amount of work involved and having been knocked unconscious by a mob of young fans, Tattersall returned to Stockport where he passed his spare time by helping one of his friends run a tiny, twenty-foot square recording studio above a local music store in the centre of the town.

Inter-city Studios

After helping for a few months, Tattersall decided to buy the studio and its equipment which consisted of two tape machines, a few microphones and egg-boxes for the sound-proofing. He paid approximately five hundred pounds and, for the next few months, worked from seven in the morning until two in the afternoon at a local bakery in order to raise money for the studio, which was now called Inter-City Studios. At this time, there were no other proper recording facilities outside of London and Inter-City could never hope to attract any big names up to Stockport as the equipment was nowhere near good enough. Instead, it had to settle for doing advertisements and demo-tapes for local bands such as The Mindbenders and Herman's Hermits.

It was at this point that Eric Stewart, a member of the Mindbenders, became involved. Having worked in the studio and always having wanted to become involved in that side of the business, Stewart accepted an offer from Tattersall to become a partner. Despite being told it was a waste of time, money and effort, Stewart invested eight hundred pounds and set about improving the standard of the equipment. His arrival also brought about a change of name for Inter-City; Stewart's favourite song at the time was The Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" so he and Tattersall chose the name Strawberry Recording Studios with the catchy advertising slogan 'Strawberry Studios Forever' in mind. The name stood out, especially since most of the London studios were simply named after the record companies that owned them.

At the end of 1968, though, Tattersall and Stewart received some bad news - they were considered to be a fire-risk to the historic building next door and were told that they would have to vacate the premises. (There are conflicting versions as to why Strawberry had to move. In Tremlett's biography of 10cc he quotes Stewart as saying that the shop downstairs wanted to expand and turn the studio into a canteen. The version used here is that told by Tattersall). After much searching, they found a building in nearby Waterloo Road that offered a suitable shell. In fact, the building they found had an interesting history; munitions factory, television shop, illegal boxing ring and, apparently, the factory where Sir Henry Segrave's record-breaking speedboat was built between the wars. Stewart and Tattersall were particularly attracted to a large middle room on the ground floor, used previously as a small cinema for salesmen's promotional films which, they thought, would be ideal for the recording area.

Waterloo Road, early 1970s

The actual move to Waterloo Road, however, was far from smooth. Although the two
owners supervised and carried out much of the work themselves the equipment, once installed, refused to work properly and the sound-proofing needed to be completely redesigned in order to obtain the best acoustics. Even when they had done this, they realised that it was not up to the necessary standards and that getting it there would require huge sums of money, something that neither of them had. They turned, therefore, to Graham Gouldman, another local man who was one of the most successful British songwriters of the 1960's, penning a succession of hits including "Evil Hearted You", "For Your Love" and "Heart Full of Soul" for The Yardbirds, "Bus Stop" and "Look Through Any Window" for The Hollies and "No Milk Today" for Herman's Hermits. He had also been a member of The Mindbenders, with Eric Stewart, during the last few months of the band's existence. When approached, Gouldman liked the idea of becoming involved in Strawberry, invested a couple of thousand pounds, and became a new partner. Tattersall and Stewart then approached Ric Dixon and Danny Betesh of the Manchester-based Kennedy Street management company who, as well as offering financial support, lent the studio an air of respectability, especially with the local bank managers. As the studio was the only one in the area, Dixon and Betesh were the only people with both the necessary knowledge of the industry and the ability to impress those who, although sympathetic, remained unconvinced of the need to spend large sums of money on such an unpredictable industry. The extra money, though, enabled the studio to be properly sound-proofed and, as with the original move, much of the work was carried out by the new owners. Tattersall, Stewart, Gouldman, Dixon and Betesh all helped to install the new sound-proofing which turned out to be a considerable improvement on the original and Strawberry became the first fully professional recording studio outside of London.

For the last couple of years of the decade, all those involved with Strawberry worked extremely hard to ensure the studio's success. Tattersall engineered for a wide variety of groups including the Syd Lawrence Orchestra, no mean achievement when you consider that he was mainly used to groups of four or five people, not nineteen-piece bands. To record them properly, he had to place the orchestra around the few available microphones and get them to move in and out until they were all balanced. Funnily enough, the finished product seemed to coincide with a revival for the big-band sound (although Tattersall was too modest to claim any responsibility). Many of the local groups who had originally used Inter-City for their demo-tapes decided to stay in Stockport, happy in the knowledge that they no longer needed to travel to London in order to record their songs. The surroundings at Strawberry certainly contrasted with those studios in the capital which were more like laboratories with white-tiled floors and engineers in white coats. Strawberry's staff wore jumpers and jeans and introduced a relaxed atmosphere to the recording process, a point emphasised by Bobby Elliot, drummer with The Hollies, who said of Abbey Road 'You were really nervous.....if the tape recorder broke down, the technicians came in like a load of doctors with white coats on and the tea-lady would arrive to serve tea in cups and saucers - very BBCish! We were just wandering around in awe.'

By late-1969, Gouldman was working in America for an organisation called Kasenetz-Katz, writing songs from nine in the morning until five in the evening for other groups to record. He persuaded the company to base him and their United Kingdom operations in Stockport and to use Stewart and two other friends, Lol Creme and Kevin Godley, as session-musicians at Strawberry. This came just in time for Stewart who was on the verge of moving into a smaller house in order to raise more money for the studio. This period, which lasted approximately three months, was financially rewarding for those concerned as the musicians churned out track after track for others to release in all parts of the world. Artistically, though, they gained little credit for their work in spite of producing a few minor hits such as "Susan's Tuba" for Freddie and The Dreamers and "Tampa Florida" for Ohio Express.

In early 1970, Gouldman returned to America leaving Stewart, Godley and Creme as Strawberry's resident session-musicians. With the money they had earned from Kasenetz-Katz they installed a new control-desk and, for the first time, a four-track tape machine. During one session of testing drum sounds on the new equipment, Creme began to sing a simple rhyme that had been in his head all day ("I'm a Neanderthal Man, You're a Neanderthal Girl, Let's Make Neanderthal Love in This Neanderthal World") and the vocals filtered through into the control room under the drum beat. Standing with Stewart, who was mixing the sounds at the control-desk, was Dick Leahy of the Philips record company who, to everyone's surprise, offered five hundred pounds to release the song as a single. In fact, it ended up costing the company a lot more as when the record was mastered in London the cutter-head, worth approximately one thousand pounds, blew up. The cause of this was the fact that the three musicians had dragged a six by four foot sheet of metal into Strawberry (intending to fire-proof the doors with it) and ended up using it as an impromptu instrument, hitting it with a hammer for the desired effect. The shock waves proved too strong for the cutter-head although any embarrassment was soon forgotten as the song, "Neanderthal Man" reached number two in the charts, the trio calling themselves Hotlegs, allegedly after the secretary at the studio!

When "Neanderthal Man" was released, Tattersall asked Philips to print the studio's name on the label and, on one occasion, disc-jockey Alan Freeman read out everything that was written there so giving the studio a big advertising boost. However, despite recording an album at Strawberry and touring with The Moody Blues, Hotlegs went no further and they returned to Strawberry, rejoined by Gouldman, intent on improving the studio's reputation still further with their new-found wealth. They installed an eight-track tape machine and Stewart told the music press, "we want to expand the studio here now.....London has been the centre for God knows how long. Nobody has been able to record elsewhere if they wanted success."

The period up until 1972 was extremely interesting for Strawberry; the visitors included Mary Hopkin, The Scaffold, Wayne Fontana, Herman's Hermits, both Manchester football clubs, Lancashire Cricket Club and Barclay James Harvest. The latter summed up the appeal of the studio when they said, "What's wrong with Stockport? It's a lot easier and more relaxing to record." They paid tribute to Tattersall's relaxed style of engineering when talking of London's recording engineers; "I just hate those guys, fussing and fiddling with knobs." The title of the article, "So Who Needs London?", showed the increasing awareness of the studio's facilities and its informal recording approach. It even attracted a self-confessed reincarnated Egyptian god called Ramases (really a central heating salesman from Sheffield) who came to Stockport with his wife, Sel, and, with Stewart, Godley, Creme and Gouldman, put together a rather strange album!

It was in 1971, though, that Strawberry received its biggest break so far when the world-famous Neil Sedaka booked the studio, along with Stewart, Gouldman, Godley and Creme as session-musicians, in order to record some new songs. Sedaka had faded from the music scene in the late 1960's and was all but forgotten yet, after hearing a song that had been recorded at Strawberry, he chose to use the studio twice in 1971 and 1972 to record a couple of albums there, "Solitaire" and "The Tra La Days Are Over". These relaunched his career all over the world and the four session-musicians, who also co-produced and engineered the records, were forever being praised by Sedaka; "I find them the most remarkable musicians I've ever worked with."; "(Sedaka) positively bubbles over with enthusiasm when he talks about the musicians. And he, remember, can have his pick of any studio rhythm section in the world." The only sour note in all this, however, was that Stewart, Gouldman, Creme and Godley felt that they were not getting enough credit for their share of the work and there was some acrimony as they pressed for something beyond the session-fees that they had received.

Working with Sedaka, though, proved a turning-point for the quartet and the studio as well. Whenever he gave interviews, Sedaka was always quick to mention Strawberry and this was bound to enhance its reputation within the industry. The musicians, with a newly installed discipline and confidence, decided that the time had come to record some songs for themselves rather than for other people as they had done for the previous five years. Sedaka's use of chord-sheets and his sheer professionalism had sharpened the group's musical skills and the first result of their new found enthusiasm was a track, written by Godley and Creme, called "Donna", a pastiche of 1950's music. Jonathan King, the record producer, agreed to release the single on his own record label after he had rushed up to Stockport to hear the song. He gave the group the name 10cc, supposedly after dreaming of a future super-group with that name, and the record reached number two in the charts. Despite the failure of the follow-up single, this was the start of four years of unparalleled success for the group with hit singles and albums following, all recorded at 10cc's Strawberry home. Whilst most of 10cc's success can, obviously, be put down to the writing, performing and production of their songs (they did all three themselves), some credit has to go to Strawberry as well. Most importantly, owning the studios meant that the band could record there whenever it was available. This was a necessity when you consider that many of 10cc's tracks took weeks to record, something that they had inherited from their Hotlegs days when, on one occasion, Creme took great delight in telling people that one song had taken three weeks, eighteen hours a day, to complete. The best example of Strawberry's contribution to the band's success is, undoubtedly, their 1975 number one hit "I'm Not In Love", described in one music paper as "A good song given a touch of genius in the studio." and which, the group estimated, had over two hundred and fifty voices in the backing vocals alone.

The amount of time available to 10cc in the studio also meant that they could afford to experiment with the recording process, something that other bands would be unable to try because of the constraints of time. As the four musicians were isolated in Strawberry there was no-one to tell them what they could, or could not, do. Such experimentation culminated in Godley and Creme's invention of the Gizmo, a device that fitted onto the guitar and created a vast new range of sounds. (Developed with John McConnell of The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, the Gizmo was patented and then marketed for others to use. In spite of the interest shown by such people as Paul McCartney, it was priced too high by the eventual marketers and the only record to explore the Gizmo's potential to the full so far has been Godley and Creme's 1976 triple album, 'Consequences'). Indeed, George Martin, producer to The Beatles, recognised the importance of bands being able to spend time "doing their own thing" in the studio and he highlighted Godley and Creme's invention as a good example of this (although, in his book 'All You Need Is Ears' he actually says that the Gizmo was invented by "two people from the group Deep Purple"!)

The importance of being located in Stockport was becoming more and more apparent to all of Strawberry's customers. Running costs were lower than the London studios and there was none of the heavy traffic that clogged-up the capital. Being just a few miles from Manchester and its airport meant that the studio could offer an attractive package to any prospective customer. In 1973, Melody Maker summed up the appeal of the studio; "When they built the Strawberry Studios....they left out one item that every other such establishment would consider essential - a clock. Life's like that outside London: In metropolitan studios, clock watching is a major past-time." Funnily enough, a couple of years later, the same paper highlighted the bias towards London that Strawberry was up against. In a review of British recording studios it said, "Probably the three foremost artist-owned studios in England are The Who's Ramport in Sahf (sic) London, The Kink's Konk in North London and The Moodies' Threshold Studios in West Hampstead." With 10cc at the top of the charts and the studio firmly in the public-eye, it seems strange that Strawberry should have received no mention at all.

As 10cc's success grew, so did the studio. In the early 1970's, Strawberry was mainly geared to the needs of the band and much of the money they made was ploughed straight back into the studio. By 1976, Strawberry had progressed from an eight-track to a twenty-four track studio and 10cc had even managed to get the famous acoustic designers, Westlake Audio, to design and construct a new control room. The fact that so many other groups also wanted to use Strawberry was proof that the studio was progressing well. Between 1972 and 1976, many famous artists fitted in around 10cc's recording sessions. These included The Bay City Rollers (who encouraged queues of screaming fans outside the building), Barclay James Harvest, Leonard Cohen, Justin Hayward and John Lodge. Perhaps the most famous name to use Strawberry was none other than Paul McCartney who helped his brother, Mike McGear, to record an album there. With McGear, McCartney wrote, produced and performed the album whilst spending the rest of the time rehearsing with his own band, Wings. Peter Tattersall has many memories of McCartney's visits to Stockport including the time that the ex-Beatle sat on the steps outside the studio serenading a couple who were waiting for a bus. Also, 10cc introduced McCartney and Wings to the 'Strawberry truth-sessions', retiring to a room in the studio and thrashing out any problems that had arisen during the recording process.

Strawberry Studios in the mid 1980s

By 1975, the good name of Strawberry had become so widespread, and so many bands were waiting to record there, that 10cc found themselves in the ludicrous position of being unable to book any time in their own studio. To overcome this, they agreed that a new studio would have to be built but they decided against building it in Stockport and chose, instead, to locate it in Dorking, Surrey. This decision to move away from their Stockport base disappointed many who realised that much of 10cc's success was due to the group's seclusion in Strawberry. The members of the band, though, justified the move South by claiming that they had reached a stage in their careers where they needed to mix with others and be nearer the centre of the music industry in order to achieve further success. The fact that they were, with hindsight, proved right was little consolation for those who still regarded Stockport as 10cc's rightful home. However, at least the band had left Strawberry on a firm financial footing and it was now a profitable business, its future virtually guaranteed. George Tremlett, in his biography of 10cc, summed-up the contribution that the band had made towards Strawberry; "There are few other bands who have ploughed so much of their own income into equipping their own studios on the scale that 10cc have done."

The period from 1976 to 1983 saw the Strawberry set-up expand and then contract again, showing the high level of risk involved in the recording industry. (Strawberry Studios South in Dorking opened in 1976 and was soon followed by Strawberry Mastering in London in 1978. This was where the recorded product was mastered onto disc, so ensuring that Strawberry had complete control of the process from recording to pressing. Strawberry Mastering closed down in the early 1980's and Strawberry Studios South in 1983). 10cc sold their interest in Strawberry Studios North in the 1980's but did, at least, return one more time to Stockport to record their 1983 album, 'Windows In The Jungle'. In 1986, the neighbouring Yellow Two recording studio took over the running of Strawberry. Yellow Two owner, Nick Turnbull, said at the time, "The Strawberry name is one of the best known in the world." but the rise in the number of home studios meant that, by the early 1990's, bands no longer needed to book time at large recording studios and, as a result, Strawberry converted to film and video production, so ending nearly a quarter of a century of sound recording in the town.

Peter Wadsworth, October 1995 - Strawberry North
 

Copyright © Peter Wadsworth 1995