Jungle Physicians

What a great story from:

palerider66:

This vid reminded me of my best studio story.

Back in ‘88 I worked with Roger Waters on one session as he passed through Boston for a couple days. He was mixing some live stuff for a Westwood One radio broadcast. I worked on “Money,” and on the live tracks, only two tracks of the four-track cash-register sounds had been recorded. Why? Because the live show was tracked in stereo, but the cash-register sounds were in quad, meaning the two rear surrounds had not been recorded.  So we had to replace the missing ones.

We had an Otari 4-track, and Water’s assistant brought a half-inch 4-track tape of the sounds. Handling the hallowed tape with that legendary Pink Floyd loop on it was, as you can imagine, a breathless moment for me, and one of the highlights of my life in the studio. I had to manually fly-in the sounds, in-synch with the intro on the live performance. We did it basically one sound at a time, punch in, rewind, play it again, punch in again, etc. It was a  royal pain and it took a long time.

This was all before Roger showed up to hear what the assistant and I had done. After about five hours, Sir Roger glided (as if floating on air) in to the control room for a listen. He was wearing sunglasses indoors and overall exuded the elegance and grace of a real British gentleman. Aristocratic. Monied. Rock Royalty in the flesh. I noticed the Rolex on his wrist - it was worth more than my car. As we played back the track, he nodded his head and said, “Right, lads. Good work. Sort of grand experiment but this proves it CAN be done. Work in-progress and all that.” He was really polite.

And here’s the best part: At the end he asked me, “Drew, would you fancy a beer?” “Well, sure,” I replied, “but this is Sunday and you can’t get beer in Boston.” He said, “Ah, no worries,” and with that he called the hotel he was staying at, The Four Seasons, which was several miles from the studio,  and had ROOM SERVICE BRING OVER SIX HEINEKENS! YES! The guy showed up at the studio wearing the white hotel jacket, and delivered the beers on a tray. Did I say Rock Royalty? As I was motioning to hand a beer to Roger, he said, “No, those are for you. Nice work today.”

Then he spirited off into the night. I sat there, alone and basically dumbfounded, drinking a Heineken that Roger Waters from Pink Floyd had bought me.

What an unforgettable day that was.