Original subtitles

This programme contains strong language.

Rockfield Films, Ozzy, A/B camera marker.

MUSIC: Love Spreads by The Stone Roses

Everyone's phones off?

Ah, OK.

Oh, fuck off.

# Yeah, yeah, yeah... #

Thank you. That is very sweet.

# Yeah, yeah, yeah... #

It's all about you, this.

I can't remember a fucking thing, to be fair.

Recording. One, two, three, four.

MUSIC: We Can Take You There by Hobo

# If you're lost and you can't see through things... #

REPORTER: A pop group on their way to a recording session, heading not

for the stifling pressures of a London or New York studio,

but to the peace of the Welsh hills near Monmouth.

Kingsley and Charles Ward are farmers

who've gone into the pop business, converting the outbuildings

of their farm into one of Europe's best-equipped recording centres.

Before we start, are you going to ask, like,

how did I personally get into the music business, what influenced me,

or are you going to start when Charles and I got the band together?

There's me when I went to school and got into rock and roll,

and three years later I left school, I was 17,

and that's when Charles and I started to go around together

and get a band going. You can start either way, see.

So where did it start?

The start of the story, we were brought up playing Chopin

on this piano - on this very piano.

We come from a family of farmers, you see,

so we're used to cows and things.

We bought this farm in 1958, my parents bought it,

and it was a stud farm for Shire horses

and we converted it into massive piggeries and things

and we had a milking herd as well, so we were basically farmers.

There's no money in farming, there never was, we never made money

out of it, and my parents obviously thought we'd end up

taking it over, but in reality, we weren't having any of that.

I just could not believe when I heard

Elvis Presley, Heartbreak Hotel, and all that stuff coming out.

I was in Abergavenny Grammar School at the time

and we were into music and that's what changed me really.

When Rock Around The Clock came to Monmouth...

# One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock, rock... #

..that's how everything in my life changed.

In 1956,

I bought myself an acoustic guitar.

I learned a few chords, three finger chords and this sort of thing,

and gradually came into playing the guitar that way.

Rock and roll, man. Cool.

Eh?

Charles and I are obviously brothers, you know,

and we started a group.

We borrowed this little tape machine

and Charles strummed his little songs out, which were good,

good little songs, and that was our first little venture

into recording something, in my mum's front room.

We were already very ambitious, but we didn't know what to do now,

so we were looking at the record label and it said EMI Records,

Hayes, Middlesex, so off we trooped with our little tape machine.

When we arrived there, it was the wrong place altogether.

It was EMI's present factory.

But the gentleman who manned the barrier going into the factory...

He said, "I'm here to get rid of people like you."

He said to us, "You should have gone to Manchester Square,

"where the main music company is",

and he very kindly rang up the doorman over there for us

and said we're coming over, so we go to Manchester Square.

Out we get with our tape machine and there's the doorman

and there's this secretary,

and eventually we went in and saw George Martin.

We said, "You've got to hear it on this tape recorder."

We were on our hands and knees under this table.

I don't know what sort of plug we had in there

but we couldn't get the bloody plug in the...in the thing there.

I think he was fascinated with us because it was the first time ever

somebody had walked into his office carrying a tape machine.

It's like booking the greatest restaurant in the world

and taking their own sandwiches.

But he didn't sign you? Well, no, he didn't.

And I left my cup of coffee, too. I never touched it.

But that's where it clicked to us that if we got some equipment,

with all the space we had, we could do something with it all.

Upstairs is the attics where we built our first recording studio.

Oh, God.

It's a right mess up here.

In those days, you must remember,

that there were no commercial studios outside the major ones,

which was RCA, EMI, Decca,

Philips, they had their studios,

but there's nowhere to record anywhere,

so the best you can do is do it yourself.

Oh, my God.

Now, typical farmers, when we first built this studio,

we knew nothing about acoustic material

so we actually got a load of what was feed bags for pigs, look.

BOCM, they were.

We used those stuffed in the wall to get a separation

from the control room to the drum room.

We bought a little mixer, we bought a little Ferrograph tape machine,

we had some microphones.

And that's where we learned how to record properly

with our own group, the Charles Kingsley Combo,

and many other local little Welsh bands.

# As I look, I can see... #

# Lucy, hynod a hyfryd wyt ti

# Lucy, hynod... #

We used to get bands in to record and charge them £5 or £10

to make an acetate.

In the other building, we had 500 pigs. Can you believe it?

But up in the attics is miles away from the farm

so you couldn't hear anything of the animals, so that was fine, like.

May I introduce you to Ann?

A picture of loveliness if ever I've seen it.

I first met her when she was 17, three months older than me,

and I couldn't believe my good luck because I'd never had a girlfriend

in my life before and Ann turned up and I was so happy.

Her father wasn't, but I was.

It's just that you came from the one side of town

and I was from the other side. She's from the posh side of town

and I was from the other side of the tracks, that's what

you're trying to say. Well, you were a farmer, weren't you?

Ann was a bank clerk, right, which was very handy to us

because she does accounts and she could type and do all that.

The main farmhouse where my parents now live,

that was my grandparents' house,

and in the farmhouse, there's a flat, so we lived in the flat.

Our sitting room doubled up as the office

but also it doubled up as the place where the bands

would come and have tea and coffee.

Lisa and Amanda, they knew how to operate the telephones.

The band member would phone us in the office.

Whoever was there, myself, my sister or whatever, would answer the phone,

and they would quite often be quite shocked.

"Yes, tell us the number. We know what to do."

How old were you doing this? I was probably only five or six.

All of my childhood memories are linked up with being here

and bands, and some of them lived with us.

Spring are a band from Leicester originally.

They were living in Nan's front bedroom,

but living with us and eating with us.

So I'd have these five lads...

..and Lisa and Amanda, and the only quiet time I had

was at 1:45pm...

..when Trumpton came on.

The boys would be sat there, and the girls on the floor,

all watching Trumpton.

SHE LAUGHS

Here is the clock, the Trumpton clock,

telling the time steadily, sensibly.

TRUMPTON THEME

They stayed with us for quite a few years.

I can't remember how long now.

And that is when Rockfield became the world's first

residential recording studios.

Aston was working-class, terraced houses,

and it was just hand to mouth, you know.

I went to school with Tony, Tony Iommi.

Although we weren't mates in school, I knew of him,

and he would bring his guitars to school.

My mum got me a job, factories and different jobs.

I wouldn't last more than a week or two.

I'd go, "Mum, I've got a job." "Oh, great."

"Mum, I quit my job." "What? Again?!"

I could never hold one down.

I'd go, "Is this it for my life?"

I was like a racehorse wanting to run,

but I had nowhere to run, you know.

I said to my dad, "Dad, can you sign for a pay bund?"

A pay bund was a money lending of £250,

and I got me a microphone, a microphone stand...

..and a 50-watt Vox PA.

Had he not signed for me, I would not be sitting here right now.

Cut a long story, we all managed to get together and form a band.

Which was horrible.

What do you mean? At the time.

Because we got this band together and we'd never played together.

I didn't even know Ozzy could sing, to be honest.

# One for the money, two for the show

# Three get ready and go, man, go

# But don't you step on my blue suede shoes

# Do anything but don't you step on my shoes... #

We used to rehearse

in a community centre in Birmingham.

We could only get in at nine in the morning

and we had people going, "Keep the noise down! You'll wake the dead!"

Come on.

Oh, blimey.

Oh, my God.

Right, we're now in the Coach House studio,

built in 1968-'69 by Charles and myself.

It was stables before. It's changed very little.

Charles and I bought an 8-track machine

which means our new studio was equal to any studio in the world.

# Ah-ah-ah

# Baby, I love you... #

REPORTER: That sound, already way up in the charts,

started its upward journey here in a derelict barn in Rockfield,

Monmouthshire, Wales,

140 miles away from the gloss of London showbiz.

The barn used to house half a dozen horses and their hay

but is now crammed with £50,000 worth of electronic hardware.

It's the sort of armoury you need these days

in the battle to reach the top.

And from that moment, we never went that way, we went that way.

TELEPHONE RINGS

We had a phone call and it was Black Sabbath,

who we'd never heard of because in those days, we didn't, you know,

and they were one of the first bands to use our new studio.

Just to go from Birmingham to Monmouth was an adventure.

We'd never... You don't understand, we'd never been in a studio.

We'd never been on a farm!

We'd never... So everything was new.

You know, coming in and seeing a cow in a field.

We were from the streets of Aston.

The only thing we ever saw was a police horse.

It was brilliant.

I remember Ozzy outside.

He had a bow and arrow, I remember, with a target,

and I remember the band. A good band, by the way.

But we were all starting off, weren't we, like, you know?

But they were an introduction to what was a really heavy rock sound

which is what Rockfield is famous for, you know.

MUSIC: Paranoid by Black Sabbath

# Finished with my woman

# Cos she couldn't help me with my mind

# People think I'm insane

# Because I am frowning all the time... #

We were loud.

We were very loud for that time.

This has still got basically the same sort of thing

that they've always had. Which is what? Basic.

# Nothing seems to satisfy

# Think I'll lose my mind if I don't find something to... #

That's what it allowed is the freedom,

because nobody was playing as loud as that.

# Occupy my brain... #

The roof tiles would rattle, you know.

# Yeah... #

CHARLES: I came up the drive and rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.

To tell you the truth, I thought the roof was going to come off.

We didn't realise what we were doing.

We didn't go, "I know, let's invent heavy metal."

It just happened.

# See the things that make true happiness... #

But when Black Sabbath with all the amplifiers turned up,

they were deafening, really,

and it was different to what we were used to, because, back in the '60s,

it wasn't that sort of heavy rock sound anyway.

Kingsley was like one of the lads.

He was a nuisance.

He'd come in and start talking away

and you'd go, "Kingsley, we're rehearsing."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, OK, OK, OK."

"We're rehearsing, then."

"All right, I'll be quiet."

What did you personally make of heavy metal?

Well, I was brought up, you know, with pop music, really.

Hiya.

Over there are my Jersey cows.

COW MOOS

See? He's even talking to me over there.

He wants feeding.

What used to happen was, they had this studio working here

and Charles and Kingsley both had a milking herd.

Hello, girls. And boys.

I've come to say hello. I've come to feed you.

So they'd go up to milk the cows in the morning,

then the band would turn up for recording,

and we'd have to get a message up there

and say, "Come on, quick, the band's here."

So they'd come down one side of the house, go in, change,

and come out looking like respected businessmen.

We still smelt of cows though, didn't we?

I just thought I'd...

I just thought I'd look after you. You like that, hey?

Hello, Amber.

I think a lot of pop groups are used to staying in flats

and things like that in London and it's very claustrophobic,

I should think, whereas down here it's very spectacular, you know?

We all lived together, they come and fed us.

We could make as much noise as we want,

mess around on the river.

We used to build rafts.

And I would be shooting my guns around.

Do you remember waking everyone up?

Oh, yeah.

I had my repeater and go... Boom, boom, boom, boom.

"What the fuck?!"

And then Ozzy got up in the morning, light the fire,

so we'd have a big fire roaring away which, you know,

he was known for setting chimneys on fire.

People can't build fireplaces like that.

It was like a smelting factory.

The heat was horrendous.

Rockfield Studios, it was an interesting place to be.

I mean, you know, it was a bit rundown really

cos a lot of the buildings were just full up with hay and bales of hay

and straw, and, of course, used as stables as well.

The essence of space rock music is having all these wonderful

weird electronics with relentless rhythm that used to pump away.

Dum-dum-dum-dum, you know.

# I

# I just took a ride... #

When Hawkwind originally turned up,

of course, they were this rebellious sort of band, very famous they were,

and I thought, "God, what are they going to be like?

"Bad boys?" I wasn't too sure, really.

And I was in the studio awaiting their arrival

and Lemmy was the first in and he said, "Hello. I'm Lemmy."

I said, "I'm Kingsley." "Hello, Kingsley. I'm Lemmy."

Lemmy was heavily into, sort of, pills and things.

It was in those days. It was all pills and whatever, like, you know.

And he said to me...

"Where can I hide my stash?"

I thought, "Oh, blimey", but anyway, he put them in the corner.

About 20 minutes later, Dave Brock turns up. "Who are you?"

"I'm Kingsley." "I'm Dave." "Hello, Dave."

He said "Is anybody here?" I said, "Lemmy."

"Oh, is he? Where did he hide his stash?"

"Blimey," I thought, "here we go!"

Hawkwind, yeah. Dave Brock.

Yeah, they loved it.

When they came for accommodation, we only had the bungalow

at the end of the drive and there was one single room in there

and we shoved about six beds in there

and the lot of them slept in one big room.

And there was one toilet between the lot of them!

But, after 1967,

the summer of love, it was what they wanted.

Everyone knows of Lemmy. What was he like at Rockfield?

He did the same as what we all did there. We used to smoke marijuana

and smoke a bit of hash and play music.

Sometimes record under the influence of organic mescaline

and we used to take LSD down there sometimes

and record tracks on LSD and so on.

We were renowned for doing that.

# Space is dark, it is so endless... #

I'll just show you the E chord, which is the famous E chord,

if this guitar's in tune.

It's, erm... So it's in E.

So...so anything...

If you go, like, it's barring things, so.

Barring it.

And that was of the essence.

So if you play Opa-Loka, it would be...

STRUMS OPA-LOKA

I mean, if you listen to Opa-Loka,

basically, it's just a rhythmic sort of drumbeat

and us just clonking away on the guitars behind it

with weird sounds going on.

In one key, I might add.

We were good at playing in one key.

You could play half an hour in the key of E and not be boring.

MUSIC: Opa-Loka by Hawkwind

I mean, sometimes, you'd think, for God's sake.

I was in the Quadrangle once and we'd done some recording

and I thought it was two different bands playing at the same time.

I wondered what was going on.

So how much time did you spend in all? Years.

HE LAUGHS

Not playing music but just doing other things.

We were all drinking and doing some drug or other.

We started off being a rock band dabbling in drugs,

then we ended up being a drug band dabbling in rock.

I mean, drugs fuck everything up, you know.

We never troubled the local police.

It was only, the fact was there was famous people here,

and in those days, you know, it was damn sex and drugs and rock and roll

and I think the local drug squads used to view Rockfield

as being a place where they should direct some of their attention to.

We just noticed that there would be cars parked

at the bottom of the drive and we realised there was people

just watching this place, taking numbers and things.

We always knew that tree by there was a parking place for anybody.

You can see what goes on in the studios, can't you?

Drugs and this sort of thing.

Unfortunately, my brother went in there one night to clear it

and that sort of thing

and the police who had busted Monmouth Grammar School,

they knew all about us all right,

and out they came and they caught him red-handed.

It was the stuff that he was going to dispose of.

And they put him in prison...

They took him in for the night, in Monmouth.

Jailhouse Rock!

We personally never got involved in it

but we can't help what the clients do, can you, like?

We were just onlookers, really.

Very exciting, very interesting, but that's what it was.

If you hear a lot of stories about the past

and a lot of stories about some of the bands that have been here,

the one thing that has probably been central to most of it is my dad.

He's been in the middle of it all.

He's just a big kid, you know.

I can't say... No, he's not getting into trouble.

Give him a long enough rope and he'll strangle himself.

I'll say no more.

SHE LAUGHS

Good old George, you've got a walk-on part now.

We're not ready yet.

This is where we built the Quadrangle studio in 1973.

There's all echo chambers down there.

We have three natural echo chambers which are fantastic.

Hello?

You can hear the echo.

It goes on for about three and a half seconds.

What used to be in here? This used to be the pig sheds.

We had nearly 500 pigs down here at one time.

# How long

# Has this been going on?

# How long... #

Ace, How Long Has This Been Going On, was recorded here

and that went to Number One.

We have guitar booths for the separation,

we have a drum room there and Charles built moving walls

in there in 19...middle '70s.

He built some walls which actually move, which was a good idea,

and so we always progress, you know, bit by bit.

Well, in 1975, when Queen were here...

HORSE NEIGHS

Oh, bloody, I can't think.

Shall we say hello to Amanda? Amanda. Get that camera off me!

THEY LAUGH

In 1975, when Queen were here, I very well remember

Brian May and Roger, Frisbee was the in game, throwing Frisbees.

I remember mentioning to Brian, "You're not doing very much".

He said, "Well, Freddie is in there playing the piano doing something."

So I walked into there, which is now an office.

In those days, it was a food store with horses' saddles and all.

And Freddie was sat in the far corner. I stood next to him.

And I didn't realise, he was probably doing the finishing touches

to Bohemian Rhapsody.

Which was called Freddie's Thing by the way. Amazing. Yeah.

And that's when the farming side took a step back

and then the music business took over.

This is a live room - a big drum room, here.

This originally was built as a games room

but Brian put his amplifiers in here,

Rush put all their equipment in here,

because they loved the sound of the room, because we have curtains

which you can open and you can change the sound of the room.

A lot of other studios spent millions on this

and they've all gone.

We spent sod all and we've survived the lot of them.

From the age of 19 to the age of 32,

I was on board a mysterious vessel.

And...

..it finally ran out of steam, air, reality and everything in 1980.

When we lost John, Led Zeppelin was no more,

so there was no doing anything else,

but moving on, you know.

There was thousands and thousands of rock singers with no shirt on...

..so I was already a cliche.

I didn't know what on earth I was going to do,

but I knew if I was going to find out what it was going to be,

it would be in a place like this.

It's just space.

There you are.

It's pastoral...

..but it's pretty, it's got... It's full of history.

Once we got rid of the pigs, then we moved on to the music business,

so it's more or less the same, except that the use has changed.

But... So you've got musicians instead of pigs.

Yeah.

HE LAUGHS

It's got drama and success and failure.

But it's all in this great, sort of, arboreal,

this green, pleasant land, you know,

rather than going into a city and grinding it out.

We were in the first year of our recording career.

We had made one album.

We recorded some of that album in Abbey Road.

Now, when you think about it, to be 19 and being in Abbey Road,

who wouldn't love that?

I just shrunk. You know, I thought...

"..Abbey Road? What are we doing in Abbey Road?"

We'd hardly been out of Glasgow,

we'd hardly been in a recording studio,

so to be in Abbey Road, it was just a step way too far for me

and everyone who worked in there was called Hayden and...

You know, it was very proper and very English

and very middle-class

and it just wasn't rock and roll,

so I couldn't wait to get out of there.

All we wanted to do was play and our producer John Leckie

had looked for residential places and he said, "There's this place

"called Rockfield. You'll love this place."

And we said, "Where is it?" And he said...

.."Wales."

HE LAUGHS

I do remember, actually, I think when we drove in there,

I think we passed by Kingsley and he looked mental

and I remember thinking, "All right, we're in the country!"

My first impression with Rockfield was...

..crikey, this is a bit rough, I suppose,

because there seemed to be more attention

going on with the farm and the animals

and the general kind of manure kind of stuff.

But the equipment was great and you had a lot of space.

You had an instant feeling of, hey, we can do anything here,

because of the size of the rooms and stuff.

Well, in the early '80s, Simple Minds turned up.

So did Adam And The Ants, you see, and they were trend-setters.

# Well, I'm standing here looking at you

# What do I see?

# I'm looking straight through... #

Music was changing because it had come through the punk thing

and we were into what was called the new wave.

# Until I learn to accept my reward... #

And, of course, new wave could be anything.

It still had to have the energy and creativity,

but you didn't have the boundaries that you had before

so when we did Real To Real Cacophony at Rockfield,

we could drum up any fantasy in our minds

and create a song out of it,

which is the kind of attitude the band had, you know.

So we were in the Coach House

and, you know, that was a big deal,

but we were always curious to know who was in the main studio

and there was a microphone set up in the middle of the courtyard.

And we thought, "What are they doing?"

Anyway, we could not believe that none other than Iggy Pop...

..was booked. I mean, we just couldn't believe it.

Can you hear me out there now? This is our rehearsal,

this is my band and these are the afternoon barflies.

One, two, one, two, three, four!

But actually, probably it was that Iggy was...

..on the wagon or off the wagon? I always get them...

He was on the wagon in as much that I think he was down there

trying to be a good boy and not to be drinking

and not to be doing anything naughty and just be seriously getting on

with the work, so they sent him down there.

There he was in the big studio, and...

..within a couple of nights he was creeping around

into our little studio because we weren't on the wagon.

Not only was that mind-blowing, but Bowie turned up

and he looked as you would imagine David Bowie looking.

I always remember because David Bowie was all in red.

He had red trousers and a red shirt on and everything.

But he had this huge... It was so Rockfield.

He had this huge bit of cheese in his hand and a can of Heineken.

CHARLIE LAUGHS

We went over there and Simple Minds sang some backing vocals,

we all went in the studio and clapped,

and a good time was had by all.

The lyric before we come in is, "You're so..."

# You're too simple minded

# Let's play it safe... #

What was the chorus, Charlie? "What do we have in common..."

# What do we have in common? Play it safe... #

# ..da-da-da. #

# What do we have in common?

# Play it safe

# I'll tell you something safe... #

Leckie, in his sweet way, would always remind you,

"The record company are coming up next week."

"Oh, God.

"Oh, God. I haven't written any lyrics yet.

"We've been here a month."

The band hadn't really found their footing.

It was still quite experimental.

We were already in a lot of debt because the first album had tanked.

They hadn't really had a hit.

If you don't come up with hits, if you don't recoup your money,

you'd get dropped, the record doesn't get released

and everything stops and the payments stop

and you're not going to make another record after that.

I remember walking up to the microphone,

we had a song called Changeling

and I think probably the first time in my life

feeling, erm, a kind of, erm...

..a sober pressure.

John was like, "Track sounds great.

"How does it sound in the headphones?" "Sounds great."

"You ready to go?" "Yeah." And they hadn't heard a word.

Pretty good.

That's a cool riff.

It's nicked!

I had moved it along and, "This is great,

"this is great, this is great, but what kind of lyric?"

And at the time, these new clubs were starting in London,

these, erm...

They weren't called New Romantics but they were on the verge of that

and they were showing pictures in the magazines and the paper

about all these stylish changeling people

and I thought, "I'm going to write about them,

"sitting here in the Welsh countryside."

In the Coach House, there's this corridor,

and at the end of the room is a door to a toilet

and if you put a microphone in this corridor

and open the door to the studio,

it picked up this great resonance from the drums,

so the microphone in the corridor, a secret weapon at Rockfield.

It was fantastic.

Changeling is probably the best track on the record for me, yeah.

# Changeling

# Well, changeling for you... #

It came out.

The record company hated it.

Didn't think there was anything radio-wise on it,

and they were right.

But the journalists liked it and started to say, "You know,

"Simple Minds are worthwhile taking serious."

The residential idea was,

you didn't have to break the train of thought or creativity,

you could stick around.

Really quite a neat way...

..of people being almost prisoners.

I had no idea of writing techniques with anybody else,

but I didn't have to consider, really...

..anybody else's opinions any more.

I was free to fail.

I tried to embrace more or less everything I could,

from contemporary sound, bit by bit by bit.

And I suppose this was the first time I used

any kind of mechanised rhythms at all.

The famous TR-808 handclaps.

And bass drum.

Dreadful. Terrible, really.

We wrote Big Log.

The whole thing about the structure of the song and the way it's played,

it's turned a corner.

# My love is in league with the freeway

# Its passion will rise as the cities fly by

# And the tail lights dissolve in the coming of night

# And the questions and thousands take flight... #

Well, the Big Log was another jazz cigarette, of course.

An African Woodbine...

..that was being shared mostly by the rhythm section,

which was one drum box and the bass player.

# In the secret that burns... #

It's a road song, though, isn't it?

Then, I could do anything, anywhere.

There was this kind of feeling of a new kind of pop music

and we were gravitating towards that,

but I think we still... There was still going to have to...

What's the song that's going to do it?

I remember being in the rehearsal room, it was the Old Mill,

and I remember the first time Charlie played the riff

to Promised You A Miracle and I thought,

"This is going to... This... This will do it."

I must say, I'm extremely pleased to introduce this next act.

It's a band I've championed a lot on my radio show

and here they are, making their Top Of The Pops debut. Simple Minds!

CHEERING

# Promised you a miracle

# Belief is a beauty thing

# Promises, promises

# As golden days break wondering

# Chance As love takes a train... #

It makes you feel good, the riff makes you feel good.

It's full of optimism.

When I hear it, that's the emotion I get from it.

It was kind of... It was a funky pop song.

# Love sails to a new life... #

Well, it was Top 10, wasn't it?

That album, New Gold Dream, people still talk about it.

It's a landmark album for us.

Erm...

And, you know, commercial success,

and, critical, it took us into all the big arenas.

One of the key changes that happened to us then

was that we'd changed record labels and, lo and behold,

Virgin had their own residential studio called The Manor.

A place for "pop stars".

And I think we thought,

"We're pop stars now and this is the new shiny world."

The technology, everything was moving on,

and I don't know the story of Rockfield then,

but I think it would have been hard for them to keep up

with Richard Branson's money.

Because Rockfield was a pioneer and everybody copied us,

there was loads of studios out there now, all residential,

and, of course, there's only a certain amount of work to go around,

and then the dreaded dance music turned up,

which wasn't quite what we did.

Well, Rockfield has always been known for rock music.

For bands playing together, loud electric guitars

and drums and stuff,

and I guess, as the '80s went on,

there was a lot more electronics being used,

there was the sampler, you know, the Akai sampler got invented

and the little cute bass computer,

and so you could programme things and trigger things

and create new music, really,

so you didn't need a drummer or a big room for a big drum sound

because you could use a sample of a drummer

and loop that and play along to that,

so, as the technology took over, you know...

..I guess people didn't book Rockfield quite so often.

LISA: Well, it did get tough.

I mean, it's always been feast and famine, that is the reality.

You know, in the '70s, it was back-to-back

and there was loads of work coming in and it was fine.

My parents had nice cars and we were off at private school

and all of that sort of stuff.

And then, you know, things changed.

There didn't seem to be as much work coming through.

And then my mum was out and she would,

she always did books for people,

she did accountancy... well, book-keeping for people,

and at one point, she had seven different jobs doing book-keeping

and that was to help keep the place going

and keep money coming into the house.

What happened to your and Kingsley's doing Rockfield together?

In the end, I milked the cows up until 1975.

We were frightened to go back to where we were.

And I was left a bit behind.

That, there, is Rockfield Studios.

In 1987, we're a big company by now,

we decided, Charles took one half of the company

and built Monnow Valley...

..and I kept the remaining bit of Rockfield

and carried on with Rockfield, so it was no problem.

It's not a case of falling out, it was a case of two different ideas

and he did what he wanted to do and I did what I wanted to do.

There was no problem in it.

I'm from Monmouth, so I grew up just down the road from the studio.

Rockfield is like this mysterious place that you knew about,

but you couldn't go out there, but you would see bands

around the town and my dad used to have the local taxi firm,

so he used to tell me about this place and about Kingsley

so I knew little bits, but, yeah,

you didn't really know too much about it,

but it was this great place that everyone was proud of in Monmouth.

As soon as you get old enough to go into the pubs,

people would say "So-and-so was in last week,"

and you get sucked into waiting to see

who's going to come in to The Nag's Head, you know.

I was into music, playing in bands, and I was recording my rehearsals.

I always had the 4-tracks out. I was always more interested

in recording the rehearsals than the actual rehearsing.

I never thought about working here.

I knew it was here, but I was planning on going away

to university and studying something else

and then the opportunity came up through a friend of mine.

A pretty strange job interview, as you can imagine, with Kingsley.

He had a moan about the music business and then said...

He actually told me to go to college and then university

and, "Think about doing something else", he said,

"But if you still want to do it when you get home,

"give me a call and there's a job for you."

It took me the time, ten minutes in the car with my dad to get home,

and I'd decided I wanted to come and do it.

You know, I didn't know where it was going to lead.

1989, 1990, there was a massive recession

and the music business suddenly caved in completely.

TELEPHONE RINGS

But life changed for us because one door closes and one door opens,

I had a phone call from John Leckie, a good friend of mine.

He had a band to produce called The Stone Roses.

And I think they booked in officially for a couple of weeks...

..but they stayed.

SHE LAUGHS

And they left, I think it was 13 months in the end

that they were here, and that saved us.

The Stone Roses saved Rockfield. I can easily say that.

Are you fed up that it's taken so long for people

outside of Manchester and the North West to catch up with you?

No. No.

# I hear you knocking down my door... #

They'd signed a deal where they had to make the record

at the record company's studio.

The band had to come down to London and stay in a cheap hotel.

We worked mostly night times

and I kept telling them about Rockfield

and saying this was a great place and where we need to go.

Through the record company and personnel

at the record company changing, we got to go to Rockfield.

We did Waterfall, a song called Waterfall,

which we'd attempted in London and not really got the best take,

and most of all, we did I Am The Resurrection.

We worked it out so that the band could play it live,

so the whole of Resurrection is one complete take, really,

from start to finish.

You all say that you expect to be the best band in the world, so...

No, we know that we are.

We don't expect anyone else to think anything in particular about us.

They can think and do what they want.

If you're the best band in the world, why aren't you Number One?

Because the record isn't out yet.

When the album came out, they became...

They became really, really special people.

You know, everyone loved them.

Well, you have to do better the next time

or you have to do as good as.

All sorts of things can happen.

The single after that was called One Love.

We booked into Rockfield to do that.

We planned to be there at nine o'clock on Sunday evening for dinner

and start Monday morning fresh, so I got there with an assistant,

then the roadies came down with a vanload of equipment

and we set that up. The band never showed up.

Monday came and went and I'm making phone calls.

"Just wait there. Stay there."

So it got right round until the Tuesday evening

and we were just planning on going home,

and shall we pack up and that's it? No-one seems to be coming.

And the door opened and Mani fell in the room

and Wreny just flopped on the...on the settee,

and then I realised they were all covered in paint.

They'd recorded a single called Sally Cinnamon

and their old record company had released it

as their next single without their permission.

They called into B&Q, the paint shop,

and went to his office and just threw paint everywhere

and jumped in the van and drove to Rockfield

and sat there waiting to see what the repercussions were.

I said, "Look, we're all set up. Let's get out there and record."

And they actually sat there and recorded

with the paint still in their hair.

The police turned up at eight o'clock the next morning,

arrested them, and got them all out of bed.

REPORTER: Gary Mounfield, John Squire,

Alan Wren and Ian Brown

arrived at Wolverhampton Crown Court to a noisy greeting

from about 30 fans.

MUSIC: Love Spreads by The Stone Roses

The second album with The Stone Roses

was done through an American record company.

Geffen were quite prepared to throw lots of money,

millions of pounds, at the band, to do whatever they wanted.

They told me, did I want to do the next session,

and it was The Stone Roses.

As you can imagine, 16, very exciting.

Yeah, what an opportunity.

A lot of pressure on them, but they just seemed relaxed.

From day one, it was great fun, absolutely great fun.

ANN: We had The Stone Roses here and two of the cows had calved.

"Oh, gosh, we must go out and see the calves,"

so we had to take them across the meadow to see the calves.

NICK: Mani embraced life around here. He was out fishing,

he became great friends with a lot of the local lads.

Mani became such a part of Monmouth, shall we say.

He met his girlfriend here, they have a son together,

and they met in Monmouth when he was in Monmouth.

JOHN: They stayed there for 14 months.

That album was called The Second Coming.

It was a long time coming.

LISA: There was one occasion that the executives from the label,

from America, were coming over and they flew over on Concorde.

It was a big, big deal.

And they all came down in their limos,

and they arrived here, and the band had gone.

Yeah, they went home.

They'd flown in and they, yeah, they went home.

And they'd taken the tapes as well, I think,

so we couldn't play them anything.

HE LAUGHS

The first time we went over there was when we went to fucking

have a little snoop on The Stone Roses, wasn't it? Yeah.

You drove the combine harvester over there...

Yeah. ..in the middle of the night.

Just, we were going, "What the fuck are they up to?!"

Cos they hadn't been doing anything for years and we'd sort of...

And I'm on about a proper combine harvester. Proper big one.

Ones that you've got to get ladders up to and it's like miles...

It's higher than that fucking roof. Yeah.

And he fucking starts it in one go and off we fucking go.

Irish blood. Crawling down the road with the big fucking lights on.

It looked like fucking... It looked bonkers.

War Of The Worlds. And then we fucking...

I think we drove it into the thing, turned the lights off,

and rolled over like something out of the Professionals

and fucking... # Dum-di, dum-di, dum-dum... #

Over the edge and then we fucking pops up and we could hear some

fucking bass line and drums going on. And then we kind of heard...

And then, I think we got caught and they brought us in, didn't they?

I don't think we brought the combine harvester back.

Yeah, we left it there.

Very dangerous. Very dangerous, yeah. I think we got fucking caught

by someone and we went in, didn't we? Yeah.

Had a little chat with Ian Brown and a few people

and they were playing some songs and stuff and we might have had

a spliff and that and then I think we fucking fucked off.

And then, I think they did it the next night.

I think they come over... Mani turned up on a tractor.

On a tractor... Yeah. ..while we were in bed, and, so they say,

they robbed all of Guigsy's weed, all our weed and that.

We'd had one album, everything was going well, I think.

And I think the money might have started...

Maybe it might have started trickling in. Maybe it wasn't.

No, it was. Yeah, the money'd started coming in.

Sales had gone well.

Definitely Maybe was up there, wasn't it?

Yeah, so it was the second album, Morning Glory,

and I think we were completely still off our heads.

Yeah, it felt mega. It was like, you know...

It was like, that's what you sort of read about, you go, "Fucking

"hell, this is what it's fucking all about, this rock 'n' roll, man!"

You know, you lived there and you didn't leave the studio

until you had your album finished.

It's like the Big Brother house, isn't it? But with tunes! Yeah.

Our first album went to number one, it was like, I guess,

the height of the Manchester kind of boom thing.

Our manager at the time thought it was a good idea to send us

away to kind of write and record an album

and to spend six weeks in one space. But, um, you know, it was...

It was a great idea, but it was also pretty nuts as well.

No distractions. Well, apart from going... Monmouth town centre.

Which was rocking, you know, there was two pubs there! Three, actually.

Was there three? Yeah, yeah!

We were in the middle of the Welsh countryside,

with just other people who were kind of quite like-minded people.

You could get up to whatever you wanted.

So, you did.

Could have gone to all these studios that had swimming pools

and huge games rooms and restaurants and stuff,

but we'd rather just come and play with the cows

and stuff.

For, you know, young people in their mid twenties, it was ideal

because we were just into getting drunk

and taking drugs and making music.

There was no-one there telling you what you couldn't do.

As long as the work was getting done, you know,

the record company would come down and check every now and again.

And Columbia turned up from America and the only person in the studio

was me and I was lying down with my head in the Leslie speaker,

tripping on acid, kind of just going round and round.

I'd been there for hours.

But, at the same time, we were getting our dinners

cooked for us, you know, Mother's there in the kitchen...

And the ladies who would come in and clean up for us.

We'd come in in the morning

and all our drugs would be lined out really neatly on the side for us.

So it was perfect.

Just perfect, yeah.

The '90s was an amazing time.

You know, we were booked nine months in advance,

both studios, back-to-back.

We would have a session leaving on a Monday morning

and they'd be loading out the one door

and the next session would be loading in the other door.

And it was constant.

But it was amazing time for guitar-based bands in British music.

You know, it absolutely was.

Why men in guitar bands?

I don't know. I don't really know why that would be.

I suppose, at the time... I mean, obviously, there were

big female singers and stuff, weren't there?

And there were big female rock artists and stuff,

but we tended to get the men, that I can remem...

That I can think of.

Fucking...

Fucking...!

With Oasis, it was quick, it was fast, cos, obviously,

coming off the back of The Stone Roses album

that took 14 months,

erm, and then other albums that I'd done, they were fast.

We was kind of working on a song a day.

Noel would get in and he'd put a guide acoustic down, always.

Whitey'd nail the drums and it'd be like bass, in with the bass, Guigs,

me, him with the guitar, he'd do his overdubs, he'd come in and sing.

It was really quick

and I remember a really quick session, song after song.

That's cos there was like loads of pubs in town that we heard

that were good, you know what I mean? It was like, get in there

and fucking smash it out and then fucking pub! Pub.

For some... We just loved being in the pub.

What was Monmouth like? Full of pubs!

I'd do bits of engineering, keep the tape machines running,

set up all the microphones, you know, record the band.

Um, a lot of driving to the pub.

All hours.

You'd wait...

Obviously, you'd wait until you get your stuff done and that,

but as soon as you get your stuff done,

if that was done at one in the afternoon... Pub.

..you'd be in the pub by ten past one, you know what I mean?

Did you ever work...?

Carry on doing stuff when you got back from the pub at night?

You'd have a go. You'd have a go, but it'd be fucking...

You'd sound like The Pogues.

Yeah, I mean, I would just go to the pub till we came back

and I would drive everyone back, you know.

Obviously, somebody had to remain sober

because we were on tape back in them days.

There was a little bit of debate on who was going to sing Wonderwall.

Noel was going to sing Wonderwall and Liam was going to sing

Wonderwall, then Noel said,

"OK, I'll sing Don't Look Back In Anger,"

and then Liam was...

Wanted to sing Don't Look Back In Anger,

so there was the debate on who was going to sing what.

Everyone wanted to make the songs the best they could

and Noel wanted to do it too

and if that breeded a bit of fucking competition,

then so be it, you know what I mean,

I didn't want to go in there,

be better than Bonehead, or better than Guigs,

I just wanted to go and be better than me,

you know what I mean? I wanted to go and do my thing and...

I just wanted...

When I'd hear them putting the songs on, I'd go,

"Right, this fucking tune needs a banging vocal,

"so hopefully I can deliver it," you know what I mean?

What did you think of Wonderwall when you first...?

I didn't like it at first. I thought it was a bit funky and I thought...

I thought it sounded like a reggae song to me. Yeah.

Proper sounded like a reggae song.

Yeah. I thought, "What's going on?!" It's weird.

# Today is gonna be the day that they're gonna throw it back to you

# By now you should've somehow realised what you gotta do

# I don't believe that anybody

# Feels the way I do, about you now... #

How long did it take you to record the vocal for Wonderwall?

Not long because the fucking party was happy hour...

Saturday night, wasn't it? Two for one!

Yeah, yeah, I think it was like... Two for one.

It was early doors, man!

So I just whipped that down in about 30 seconds, man.

# I don't believe that anybody

# Feels the way I do about you now

# And all the roads we have to walk are winding... #

I remember doing Wonderwall, had to set him up on the wall,

outside the Coach House studio.

So I've set the mics up up there and he's doing...

The guide guitars for Wonderwall were done on top of the wall.

So, I'd been into town... Oh, yeah.

Probably had a couple of lagers, but I bought a remote control car,

right? Proper... You know, big fat wheels on it.

And I'm looking out the lounge and I see Noel sat up on a wall

with loads of microphones on him, outside with an acoustic guitar.

And I was like, "What the fuck?! What's he doing?!"

And he's trying to catch the atmosphere, you know,

the birds singing and all that stuff.

So I was like, "I'm getting him!"

So I've got this car and I'm like, "I'm not having this!" Fucking...

So, I was like... Got it into first gear, so this car's like, "Zim-zim!"

I can see Noel's head like...

In his headphones, "What the fuck's that noise?!

"Is that a bird?!" You know what I mean! Fuck it, man! Yeah, yeah!

# You're gonna be the one that saves me... #

We would definitely have a few little nights

where we were all very pleased with our work

and that and we'd go,

"Shall we listen to it back five million times and fucking..."

Double loud. "..pat each other on the back and that."

We definitely did a lot of that.

This one night, we were sleeping in the front of the house,

and they were working in the Coach House studio

and we'd gone to bed,

normally, I suppose, I don't know, 11, 12 o'clock, something like that.

And we couldn't get to sleep because we could hear the music so loud.

Kingsley kept saying, "I hope the villagers can't hear it."

We stuck it out to four o'clock

and Kingsley said, "It's no good.

"We're going to have to tell them to stop it."

So I came down the stairs, came out through the back,

and as I got to the studios, the outside door was open

and the inner door was wide open.

I was standing there like this. And I could see them going, "It's Ann!

"It's Ann!" And of course, he switched all the lights on then.

"Oh, Ann, Ann, sorry... Er, is there a problem?"

"Well, yes, there is, actually."

I said, "Kingsley and I haven't been able to get to sleep

"because of the music."

And I said, "I don't know what the villagers are like, but could I ask

"you to close the outside doors,

"or at least both doors, while you carry on?"

"Oh, right. OK. Right, thanks, Ann. Thank you."

And they apologised to Ann the next day.

# Wake up, it's a beautiful morning

# Wake up, it's a beautiful morning

# Wake up, it's a beautiful morning... #

Shall I turn this off...?

As soon as I started playing it,

as soon as I played those three chords,

I knew it was going to be something different.

I really like minor chords.

I really like soul music cos it's like uplifting

but sad at the same time.

I wanted to get a brass section in.

And I'd sent them a demo and a couple of notes and they turned up.

I think it was Tom Jones's brass section.

And it was so cheerful, what they were playing, I was aghast.

"Can you not just...flatten a few notes there?"

And they did and they still... It's just too chirpy for me.

# Summer's gone, days spent... #

"Summer's gone, days spent with the grass and the sun."

I was trying to get drug references in!

But as soon as those first three chords, we just went for it.

# Wake up, it's a beautiful morning

# The sun shining for your eyes... #

I think everybody were pinning their hopes on that one track.

It just got played everywhere.

I mean, it still gets played everywhere.

I don't know who plays it. Someone's playing it all the time.

Rockfield now was rocketing, and, in 1997,

out of the top ten albums, Rockfield had seven in the top ten.

I can't remember who they were,

but we know that seven of the top ten were done at Rockfield.

OK? We grew up in South Wales. Rockfield, it's a legendary place.

It was the first ever residential recording

studio in the world, apparently.

Kingsley says! Kingsley!

It was definitely James who drove us there, to go there in '97.

And we came out with

If You Tolerate This. We thought it was a B side.

We went to Rockfield

and the magic dust turned it into our,

you know, biggest number one.

One, two, three, four, five... It's only six chords in the song.

You know, it's a really simple song.

Um, and, like, you know, of course you've got the, like, you know...

# The future teaches you to be alone

# The present to be afraid and cold

# So if I can shoot rabbits, then I can shoot fascists... #

It was the last time we'd ever really committed anything

just to tape without any...

The aid of Pro Tools or the digital morass of stuff

that you have around, new tech, to help make records now.

And it was quite effortless.

But that was the thing about Rockfield.

If something was sounding good, you just didn't mess with it.

# And if you tolerate this

# Then your children will be next

# And if you tolerate this

# Then your children will be next

# Will be next, will be next, will be next... #

Rob Collins, keyboard player. He didn't really speak very much,

but he really drove the band.

Turned up on a Monday and Rob was playing that... This riff.

Turned up on Tuesday, he was still playing this riff.

# Da, doodle-da, da, duh-duh... #

And by the end of the week, he was still playing it and I said,

"You thought about putting any other chords in there, Rob?"

Got to the following week

and a couple of chords to throw in on your riff.

# One to another

# Sister and a brother

# And it's changing the way that you feel

# Pleased to meet you

# Hope I never see you

# I'll be at ease watchin' you sleep

# Watchin' you smile... #

The whole thing just kind of grew and we just played around with

the sounds in the studio and we did a load of overdubs.

# Love, I adore you

# Always lookin' for you... #

We just knew that we had this magic, modern Northern Soul stomper.

You know, just very enthusiastic time

and all of us sort of, like, dancing on

the mixing desk and, you know, crazy times.

We were all taking a lot of drugs at the time. Er...

I can't speak on behalf of everybody in the band, but I was.

Yeah.

Who were the most hedonistic in the band?

Me and Rob.

Rob Collins,

our keyboard player.

We experimented with different ways of...

Of getting deeper into our music.

That was the idea, anyway.

And experiment with each other as well.

You know, as people. We were like human experiments.

You know, Rob would go clubbing quite a lot in Bristol and then come

back and, you know, early hours and then sort of, like, do little bits.

We'd have a song and we'd wake up the next day

and it had become like, you know, an acid house track!

And then, we'd be like, "What the fuck is this?!" You know, and...

And then, bring it back to something else.

What had happened that night? Just, like, ecstasy.

But then, that's pulling and manipulating

and working things out and stretching things,

which I think is an amazing thing, so it was a struggle,

but I don't know, it was pretty good.

Listening to Tellin' Stories now, you know,

it's just the most vibrant-sounding thing.

We did all of it in Rockfield, that album.

Although, to be honest,

we would swap and sort of like go to Monnow Valley

and then come back to Rockfield to do vocals and things like that.

So, you know, Tellin' Stories was the last one that we did there.

But you know, as you know, it kind of all...

You know, it kind of ended there as well.

The first time was so easy, it was really easy.

We were getting on really well.

Whereas the last album, Kingsize, we weren't getting on very well.

It's weird because Rockfield enhances your experience,

so if you're having a great time,

it's just the best place in the world.

And if you're not, then you're just getting on each other's nerves.

Because you are in that...

Pushed together in that place, there's nowhere else to go, really.

The magic goes out of the walls.

Being in a residential studio, it's 24/7.

At the end of the day, it's a very intense relationship within

bands and you're talking with...

About creative people, aren't you?

You know, and with that creativity comes high emotion, shall we say?

And it all gets magnified in a place like this.

The trouble with being in a residential studios

for a long period of time,

they start off all great friends,

and, eventually, it starts to get a bit edgy.

Bands are either the type that do this or they fall apart.

A bit like families, isn't it?

Cos I don't play any instruments, you know what I mean?

And a lot of the... All the rest of the band play an instrument.

I sort of do my singing and I'd be sort of bored,

do you know what I mean?

So then I'd be sort of just going and twiddling my thumbs

and I'd think, "I'm fucking going to the boozer,"

so I'd be in the pub most of the time with whoever.

So then I'd bring a few people back and I think that's when...

I think that's when it all went a bit tits up with me and Noel

because I think...

I don't know where he'd gone, somewhere, but like loads of

people come back and started looking at his guitars and shit

and you're not allowed to look at his guitars.

And it all went a bit...

Yeah, had a little argument and then that was it.

I think we had a little bit of a...

It was a proper fight. Proper brawl.

Yeah, cricket bats and air rifles and... Dustbins.

Noel might have used the cricket bat to hit me,

or just wave it at my head. I don't remember much, but...

We had air rifles. We locked them up. Yeah.

They got locked up cos they might have got used.

There was just a lot of running around and fucking throwing shit

at people and I just remember him getting in the car and driving off

and I was stood there like a fucking wild bastard, just going,

"Come on, you fucking shitbag!"

Didn't you throw a dustbin at the car, or something? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I might have, yeah.

As it was flying up the drive, yeah. Yeah, I should have... Yeah.

Just little things, but them little things are just little.

You know what I mean? It's the craic, innit?

Was that one of the biggest fights you ever had with Noel?

Probably, yeah. It was one of them. But... It was a proper one.

As fights went, it was a good one.

It was carnage!

You know, some things got broken, some...

I mean, here, I didn't really know what to make of all that

cos it was the first time I'd kind of seen something like that.

I wasn't used to it.

But everybody here seemed to take it in their stride, you know.

I think they'd seen it all before, so nothing was going to shock them.

So, yeah, they just cleaned it up the next day

and it was like nothing had happened.

Yeah, I think Noel went home.

He's always been a bit like that, you know what I mean?

"What are you doing, bringing people back when we're working?"

And I get it, you know what I mean?

But my argument would be, "What you doing fucking taking 900

"takes to fucking do one guitar riff

"when you should be in the fuckin pub with me?!"

Do you know what I mean? Entertaining me!

Were you close at that stage? Yeah, super close. We're all close. Yeah.

Not as... We weren't like Bros or anything.

We weren't fucking like... Like fucking Jedward, do you know

what I mean? Jedward! You know what I mean? We weren't like...

We'd just go, "All right." And he'd go, "All right,"

and then that would be it, know what I mean?

That was the story of the band's life really.

It'd sort of be good one minute and then it'd be chaotic the next.

Until the poor lad had enough one night in Paris.

And then he took his bottle home.

And that was when you split? That was when we split, yeah.

But is the same stuff that was between you

that caused the arguments, the same stuff that made it also good?

Yeah. We were bang into it 24/7.

We were also, which is our downfall...

We were also into fucking the other side of it as well.

The party side of it, you know what I mean?

Like, all these bands that sit there

and go, "Yeah, we're fucking great." Yeah, you're great.

You were shit at getting off your box though, weren't you?

So, youse lot can go. You know what I mean?

We were good at being in the studio and we were also good at

being in the pub, you know what I mean?

And I'm proud of that, as much as I am of the great vocals

and the fucking takes in the studio, you know what I mean?

We were fucking into the whole thing, man.

# How many special people change?

# How many lives are living strange?

# Where were you while we were getting high? #

We were walking and talking in a certain manner and singing

and whatever and playing in a certain manner

that it had to go off, you know what I mean?

The music went with what we were saying.

Had swagger, you know what I mean?

# Someday you will find me

# Caught beneath the landslide... #

I felt we enjoyed the life, you know what I mean?

Can you hear that in the record, do you think? I think so, yeah.

Definitely. There's a happy vibe on that album, I think.

It's all... You know what? It's all a bit of a blur, really. Um...

We'd been to one of the...

One of the pubs in the town.

It was the furthest one

from Monnow Valley.

There'd been a bit of an argument over, um, one of the guys who

was doing some extra mixing on the record.

We'd had a bit of a barney with Rob about it.

I said, "Come on, let's go. Let's get out of here.

"Let's go," and you know, it was fine.

Rob had a half a lager and he was playing the bandit all night,

which was what he liked to do.

So, me and Mark went back. Rob was driving behind us.

From Monmouth town, it's quite like windy roads.

Lots of hedges and lots of corners and stuff like that, lots of fields.

And he was speeding up and he was kind of, you know, being crazy,

like something in a film.

And then all of a sudden, just disappeared.

We all thought that he'd taken a detour

to go and get some supplies, or something.

You know, and didn't really think much about it at all.

Maybe about 45 minutes went by and the police came round.

And said that you should get yourself to Abergavenny Hospital.

And that's when I thought, "Oh, what's he done?

"What's he done now?"

And me and Mark went to the hospital and...

..I heard it on the radio.

It was just going through my head, the lyrics,

every lyric that was in it, it was just like, you know,

"One to another, sister and a brother,

"changing the way that you..."

You know, it just kind of felt like it was... I just knew that...

I knew what I was going to face when we got there.

We knew The Charlatans. We knew them pretty well.

And I do remember just one night and I was here, happened to be

staying here, and you can hear the main road and I just heard

this car driving incredibly fast

down the road, and then you heard sort of the du-du-du-duh of

them going over cat's eyes.

And you thought, "God! He is going at some pace," you know.

"He's driving fast."

And there's a really nasty deceptive bend at the end of our meadow.

And then you heard the crash.

What happened? And he'd... He'd just...

The car, I guess, had gone too fast round the corner

and had gone out of control, turned the car over.

You know, and when we found out that it was Rob...

You know, it was just awful.

You know, Rob... Rob was...

He was the first person who ever put me up, you know.

When I went to see The Charlatans,

he was the first person who put me up

and I stayed at his house

and we'd listen to people's records

and talked about how we were going to change the world.

We talked about all that all the way through,

you know, the times of making records.

And with Tellin' Stories, he's on it, a lot of the recordings,

we tried to keep as much of his stuff intact as we could.

And, yeah, he's always going to be a part of that record,

he's always going to be a part of Rockfield.

He died there, you know.

And, um, he's always going to be part of the Rockfield story.

And I think some of his ashes are scattered there as well.

But, um, you know, he's not gone,

he's just in a different dimension, yeah.

One, two. One, two.

It's good for me.

He's playing tonight.

It's... We...

From those times, you know, we run like little samples and loops

and Rob's been on tour with us since...

Since he died.

Feels quite comforting, you know, when you're playing and...

And, you know, every night that we play,

you know, that they're still playing.

# Pleased to meet you... #

The isolation and the place allowed us to create our own world

and we captured... We captured...

You know, the rooms allowed us to capture that

and I'm forever grateful about that.

I love it. So many amazing memories there, such a positive place.

MUSIC: CORO A BOCCA CHIUSA FROM MADAME BUTTERFLY BY PUCCINI

As I remember, it was 1999.

We had just been students and then after that, we were cleaners a bit.

We had never recorded out of London before.

We'd never really recorded before, to be honest.

We'd done one session a few months before in London,

which hadn't gone so well.

So we were going there, it was kind of a make-or-break session.

I think we knew absolutely nothing about Rockfield

before we went there and, I mean,

I remember sort of vividly when we turned up

when we drove down, it was like a little unmade road

and there was cows.

And I sort of wondered what on earth we were doing there.

So it was our first real dip into a proper recording studio

and we'd heard that The Stone Roses had spent

about two and a half years there

or something like that, or maybe more.

By the time we got to Rockfield, it was like, this is your...

You know, we'd been given kind of six months to get used to

being signed and stuff and then our label were like,

"You've got to kind of make it happen now."

So it was very much like some sort of musical Hogwarts, you know.

We were sent away to figure it out.

We were recording a song called Shiver.

And we went outside to have, like, a breather

and it was just so beautiful outside.

All four of us were outside

and Ken and he was like, "Look up there, lads!

"Look at the stars."

He literally said, "Look at the stars,"

which is the first line of that song

and it was really mindblowing.

We'd been in London for, like, five years,

so we hadn't really seen anything

beyond smog for a while.

So that line was in my head

and then, I was thinking about

how Neil Young sings the word "stars" like,

"Starrs... Starrrs..."

Like he does a sort of bend in it.

So then I went back in to try and do this acoustic.

So...

So a normal tuning...

That isn't it.

Right?

So we had this song called Shiver, which is like this.

Which was like our attempt at a Jeff Buckley song.

And we were recording that.

Anyway, I went back in to sit behind the control desk,

mixing desk, waiting,

and something was wrong with, uh, the machine,

so I was waiting, and I saw...

Then I... Then that chord, I started doing that.

And I started thinking about Neil Young and I was like...

# Stars... #

I was just messing around!

This is really the very humble beginnings.

# For you... #

Then I tried like a... That's a normal chord shape.

But it sounds different in this tuning.

I don't even know what that chord is.

I was just doing that.

Then I got the title from the Yellow Pages,

which was about a 45 degree angle over there.

# They were all... #

I was looking for a word which was like uhhh, ehhh...

Yellow...

So then I thought, "I like this."

So then I went through.

Everyone else was watching football, I think.

And I said, "Guys, what you think about this?"

And they were like, "Yeah, that's OK."

They weren't particularly interested.

And then I went into the bathroom in the living-room area.

And then the chorus came out, uh...

# Your skin

# Oh, yeah, your skin and bones... #

Then I showed them that and they were like, "Yeah, we like that."

And that gave us our lives for...

..for the last 16 years.

CROWD NOISE BUILDS

One, two, three, four.

# Look at the stars

# Look how they shine for you

# Everything you do

# Yeah, they were all yellow... #

What was it about?

What's it about? I don't know.

Just someone awesome.

Was it about someone specific? No.

Most of our songs are about someone or something awesome.

Whether that's a person or a girl or a child or a...

..entity or...a figurative way of speaking about the Earth.

We're always banging on about love and amazingness.

And I think we always will.

# Oh, what a thing to have done

# And it was all yellow... #

I think that session at Rockfield helped us,

uh...kind of solidify who we were

and what we were trying to do as a band.

The sound of our first album really came from Rockfield Studios

and that sort of back-to-basics mentality

that was imposed upon us there.

Well, good songs will always be written all over the place,

but I think what is changing

is that studios are going out of business all over the world,

because of the ease of which you can now record on computers and whatnot,

and also there's not that many people willing

to put a band of four kind of just post-teenagers,

you know, in an expensive studio situation

and let them stay there for a month and see what happens, you know,

not that many record companies are taking risks like that.

Rockfield will always be a part of me,

because we started Black Sabbath there,

I started my solo career there.

I can go and live in Beverly Hills,

but for some reason, I end up back in Rockfield.

It all helped to create what we did.

It's... It's just magic.

I loved...

I loved being in residential studios,

I fucking loved it.

You're a proper band, aren't you, when you're in there?

Who knows, man? I mean, music's done differently now.

I do a lot of my stuff fucking through e-mails, man.

You know, they fucking e-mail you the drums and that these days

and go, "I'll e-mail you the fucking high hat."

In ten years' time, you've got half a tune done.

It's more of an old school vibe.

Where's the vibe of that, you know what I mean?

Well, I'm still struggling on,

trying to make records and write songs.

Where do you do it now?

Up in my loft, yeah.

Well, I can do anything up there that we did in...in Rockfield.

Nowadays, with equipment, you know, for recording,

all you need is a laptop, really.

When you're recording on a computer, you know,

your song can be performed perfectly.

It might take you a good few weeks

tweaking it and fiddling around and stuff,

but it does have the potential for perfection.

But perfection is not always what you want.

You want something that has emotion and feeling.

You have to capture some magic.

And some mystery, you know - magic is mystery as well, you know?

There's often, you know, something...

Maybe The Stone Roses record, there's a lot of mystery about it,

which is why people still listen to it.

Since our times at Rockfield, we've built our own place

kind of to try and give ourselves

that same sort of freedom.

It's not as good as Rockfield, no way,

but I like to make records,

and I'm really passionate about making records.

Charles and Kingsley were passionate about making recording studios,

and making them the best studios in the world.

And they have achieved that.

We were very, very lucky.

But we...

..we turned the recording world upside down.

BASS GUITAR RIFF

PERCUSSION STARTS AND STOPS

# Charming little woman, oh

# Who can set a man to rights?

# Charming little woman, oh

# Who can hoax and coax you too?

# Who can beat you black and blue?

# Who can love you better too?

# Charming little woman, oh. #

I was so excited about being here,

because of mainly Queen, to be honest.

Have you encountered Kingsley and Ann yet?

I have, I've met them.

We met Kingsley yesterday morning,

and he was out riding around on his tractor,

and he was very sort of grumpy

about people coming to sit on the Wonderwall,

and then he rode past in his tractor

and got a massive puncture, pfft, like that!

And, yeah, he's been fabulously grumpy

the whole time we've been here, actually.

Grumpy and also welcoming and full of stories.

We work seven days a week, as we always have done.

We're a leisure-based company today. We do a lot of holiday lets.

We do a lot of masterclasses, our recording.

We're the milking stool.

With a milking stool, it's always on three legs.

If you start on one leg, you fall over.

Two legs, no good. Four legs, you will rock.

But three legs, you're steady, cos you can't rock.

The holiday lets cannot believe their good luck when they come,

because I give them a tour.

There's so amazed at where they are that they can't believe it.

No fighting!

No fighting. Don't have a go at me.

My mum always says the animals are her sanity, you know,

because there is something wonderful

about beginning and ending your day with animals.

Whether that be, you know, feeding the cows first thing in the morning,

letting the chickens out first thing in the morning,

walking the dogs, mucking out the stables.

And then, at the end of the day,

get the horses settled for the night in the stables.

Beginning and ending a day with animals, for me, anyway,

and I think it's the same

for my parents, definitely, and my sister...

I just think that, you know, nature is a leveller,

it's grounding, it centres you.

And I think that's really important somewhere here.

It's about being a part of something way bigger than you.

You're a part of something else, rather than just it.

Very important for rock stars!

Well, you've got to do something with your life.

Never give in, keep going.

The best is yet to come.

# How long has this been going on?

# How long has this been going on?

# Well, if friends with their fancy persuasion

# Don't admit that it's part of a scheme

# But I can't help but have my suspicion

# Cos I ain't quite as dumb as I seem

# And you said you was never intending

# To break up our scene in this way

# But there ain't any use in pretending

# It could happen to us any day

# How long has this been going on? #