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cRAFT Phil Harding He has a background in the engine room of one of the greatest hit factories of the 80s but his success extends before and after SAW and PWL. Phil Harding shares his insight with GEORGE SHILLING hil Harding grew up in Romford, Essex, and landed a job at London’s Who did you learn the most from at Marquee? Marquee Studios straight from school. He was there from 1973 until 1985, Probably technically from Geoff Calver, and tips, hints and how to deal with clients working on sessions with legions of famous names, as well as learning to from Phil Dunne. He used to arrive in a full suit with a bowtie, like it was still the work fast making soundalike Top Of The Pops albums in three days. Upon 60s, and that was his image. He’d smoke dope and be a great friend to all the graduatingP to engineer, Harding found himself working with disco artists and punk musicians and producers — he wasn’t straight-laced, he was flamboyant. And of bands including The Clash and Killing Joke, where often there would be no producer. By course the very flamboyant Gus Dudgeon as we remember him, he and Phil were a 1985 one of his main clients was Pete Waterman and his producer partner Peter Collins, match made in heaven. Phil was a great engineer; he’d cut corners more than Geoff, and when Stock Aitken & Waterman decided to set up their own PWL Studios, it was a and get results. And that stood me in good stead for later on when I was doing a natural move for Harding (and several other Marquee staff) to move with them. lot of fast pop turnaround work. Harding recorded and mixed SAW’s first number one, Dead Or Alive’s You Spin Me Round, and was soon being credited with the middle name Mixmaster on the What were your first engineering experiences? PWL records, due to his increasingly important role mixing hits in PWL’s Bunker I engineered all sorts of things from the Clash — part of the punk revolution was studio for Princess, Mel & Kim, Rick Astley, Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, and that the bands had no producer. It was like, Book us a studio, we’ll have whoever many more. Partnering with Ian Curnow, the pair increasingly mixed external the house engineer is, and we’ll produce ourselves. So I went through some fairly projects like Debbie Harry, Pet Shop Boys and Jesus Jones, and broke free from hairy sessions. The one that sticks out in my memory the most is the first Killing PWL to set up a room at The Strongroom where boy bands became their speciality, Joke album. The A&R guy turned up with a couple of crates of beer and champagne having enormous success with acts like East 17, Let Loose and Boyzone. on the first day of recording, and no instruction other than, Good luck Phil, here’s Eventually Phil tired of the genre and semi-retired to Suffolk, but he has the band! And off we go…! Haha! Wonderful guys, but with no central leading diversified into music technology education and has become Chairman of J.A.M.E.S. figure in the band and no producer. He is also vice-chairman of the MPG. He released a solo album in 2008, and has written an entertaining book about his PWL years, PWL From The Factory Were you expected to produce? Floor, which is available from his website philharding.co.uk. He is now back in It was expected that I would technically and creatively get down what the the hotseat on a couple of projects — Canadian actress/singer Louise Robey and band wanted the best I could. And it was expected that the band could and Manchester-based singer Ellis. Resolution met Phil at his old hunting ground The should produce themselves. But their idea of production was that each member Strongroom, London. (photos www.recordproduction.com) should come into the control room, and stare at me from the other side of the 32 resolution January/February 2010 cAt R f When you mixed the PWL hits, why did you have Symphonic setting on both the Rev 7 and Rev 5? The reason it was there was to turn instantly something that was mono into a glorious stereo, like a keyboard or something, but I think they would have been on different settings. So I ended up with three — the Dimension D was doing that as well, in its humorously subtle way, which I used to put on bass, and even occasionally a lead vocal, to give it more spread, but you wouldn’t do that through the Symphonic. The Eventide Harmonizer would always be on a slightly sharpened setting for a lead vocal, just to brighten it. When people say, ‘How did you get that Kylie vocal sound?’ it was just double or triple tracked vocals, with that on the mix, just the minimum up, and in the centre with the vocal. Did you ever go out clubbing? No, it was always Pete, he was the one who went out clubbing, still DJed, and he’d bring stuff in. But you were left to your own devices to do club-specific 12-inch mixes… And it was quite strange for someone like me, a trained engineer, non-DJ, to be doing that, and sometimes if I’d go to DJ conventions — I got asked to judge at the DMC DJ Championship one year, and thank God I was surrounded by people like Ben Lebrand who were remixers but coming from being DJs that would tell me what on earth was going on! desk during playback, screaming at me to get whatever their instrument was, louder than anyone else’s! Especially the keyboard player/singer Jaz, he’d absolutely scream at me! And it’s like, we’re only recording, it’s not the final balance, guys! It was quite an exciting time, for an engineer to go through that. Working under Gus, and then going on and engineering like that was good mentoring towards production later on, and how to deal with bands and artists. Did you help create the PWL in-house sound and style? I was there from day one, so I did help create it, and the creation of the various genres of sound that we went through — it was all pop-dance, but we went from 125bpm Hi-NRG disco, down to Princess R&B through to Chicago House, so we went through lots of different styles while we were there, but people tend to say there’s one overall sound. Yes, and it was quite a different sound from pop records in the charts previously… Yeah, and each time there was one of those changes I was generally quite involved in helping to shape that. KMR_NeveGenesys_NoCompromise_Resolution.indd 1 25/09/2009 11:39 January/February 2010 resolution 33 cRAFT What guided you with the structure of the format? Did you ever use the Harmonizer to correct pitch? We based the Divine structure on Frankie Goes To Hollywood, then Dead Or Alive Only for brightening up on the mix session. Only when the Akai sampler came came in and said, We want to sound like Divine and Hazell Dean, and each time along could we do drastic pitch changing. you go along either copying your own sound or someone else’s sound, and you end up with your own sound, developing routines where you know what the DJs Presumably sequencing the Linn 9000 was a bit clunky? want. You give them a good chance to mix in the beginning, a good chance to mix It was continually breaking down, so there was a process of like, if a sequence is out the middle, then go through to the end and give them a good chance to mix out in there then get it on tape while it’s working. In a two-room setup there were four — it’s not brain surgery. Increasingly, myself and Ian [Curnow] did go out to clubs. Linn 9000s, doing the rounds of studio and maintenance room. You’d often have guide drums on tape that may not become the final drums until the mix, and even What did you do with those influences you heard in the clubs, were then, nearly always, the kick and snare would be something locked in the AMS you directly copying the sound? sampler. And apart from the bass and a few high end keyboards that would need The difference we would add is that we would try to commercialise it, so we’d take sequencing, most other keyboards would be played live to tape by Mike or Matt it out of the underground and make it palatable for daytime radio. Rather than just or whoever was around. Matt would do guitars, so a lot of live played stuff would being in a club, so that Capital Radio could play it — and play our 12-inches as be there. well. We would be influenced by and be copying, but not so directly that that’s all we’d do. Which was not the impression… Very good players, exactly. Only when Ian Curnow came along, by the time we got Once Pete started bringing in soap stars, how did you cope with on to Rick Astley and Mel & Kim, Ian would do Fairlight stuff, you’d get it running singers who couldn’t sing in the days before Autotune? in sync off the SRC, print it to tape, and that would be it! Ian would sequence the You’d always rely on having session singers come in and give you plenty of strings and the brass on Never Gonna Give You Up, Ian still has those samples to backup, which generally would leave you with only a couple of verses to deal this day.

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