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Henry Priestman
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Liverpool-based Henry Priestman has sold three million albums with his band The Christians. Besides TV, film, games and advertising work he writes with stars like former Spice Girl Mel C and upcoming artists like Marli Buck (whose album is due out on Sony in 2005). We think he must have some talent. He thinks he’s just lucky…
How did your interest in music start, and does it have somehing to do with living in Liverpool?
 I was actually born in Hull, on the east coast of Britain. I found even aged 7 that I loved music with a passion far more so than my friends….While they bought kid’s comics, I insisted on my Mum buying me “Disc & Music Echo” and “NME”. I loved the Beatles, the Kinks, the Stones, Tamla, just pop in general (when pop wasn’t the dirty word it is now – that said, I’m still a pop man rather than a rock man!).
However, The Liverpool link is important. I had to choose what I wanted to do after school, and all I wanted to do was join a band: so Art College seemed the ideal place, due to the rich seam of former students in bands (Lennon, Clapton, Townshend, Ray Davies, then later David Byrne, Pistols, Clash etc…), and Liverpool seemed the right town, for its musical heritage.
Even in that year’s Liverpool Art College prospectus there was a piece on the current college band, “Deaf School” (containing Clive Langer who would go on to produce Dexys Midnight Runners, Madness, Bush, Bowie, and was the first person to suggest to me to write my own songs!). Deaf School had just secured a 3 album deal with Warners… I knew I was heading to the right place.
Strange to think, Leeds Art College was my first choice, but I never passed. If I’d gone there things might have been different, as in my year were Marc Almond and Dave Ball who would go on to form Soft Cell!!
 What instruments do you play and what kind of training or experience do you have?
I had a few piano lessons aged 9, but soon gave up, as I wasn’t bothering to learn to sight read – I would merely use my ears – I didn’t understand all the theory, and basically wanted to play pop!
I got a snare drum for my 10th birthday, a bass drum at Xmas, tom tom for my 11th birthday etc…! Though I’m no drummer, merely having a grounding in it means it’s great for drum programming.
Then aged 14 I got a guitar, learned the chords to “Satisfaction” and I was away!
When I arrived at Art College everyone played guitar, so I reluctantly moved back to keyboards… but it was the best move I ever made, and now I suppose it’s my main instrument.
Do you write both music and lyrics and do you like to co-write?
I write both music and lyrics. Music comes easiest, lyrics I have to work at. With The Christians, I wrote mainly on my own (a school friend, film-director Mark Herman, helped me with some early lyrics), but since going on the “EMI writer’s week” for 6 out of the last 10 years (I am signed to EMI for publishing), I have experienced the joy of co-writing, and now find it hard to return to working on my own… I get a song up to a certain point, then leave it for the right co-writer/singer to come along and finish it with me.
Where do you get inspiration?
If you mean inspiration to start a song, then it’s so many ways: I could start from a drum loop, a sample, a few chords that sound good together, or nick a chord sequence from an old song… we all do it!
Lyrically, it might be a phrase you hear on TV, or overhear people in the pub, or sometimes the “la, la, la” guide melody line actually suggests some lyrics.
What was your first big break?
Since my late teens I’d played in bands. One band, Yachts, actually got to record two LPs for Warners/Radar. We cracked the Billboard top 100 and got to do a 40 date tour of the US in the early eighties.
But my real first taste of success was with The Christians: our first eponymous album went straight into the UK charts at number 2, stayed in the top 100 for over a year, and went triple platinum, and became the biggest selling debut album in the history of Island records.
The follow up album “Colour” then broke us into the European market, with a number 1 in France, and major success in Spain and Scandinavia, with the album selling 1.3 million
 How did you discover Soundscape?
I am actually one of the very original users of Soundscape, even before it was called “Soundscape”!
With the Christians, we had a sponsorship deal with “Cheetah” who in the early 90’s, at the height of our success, donated us various drum machines, synths and mother keyboards (the same mother keyboard that I still use!).
Cheetah were involved with developing a hard-disc recording system, and we, The Christians, were asked in 1991 to help demonstrate this revolutionary new product on BBC TV’s peak hour programme “Tomorrow’s World”, a long-running mainstream show that dealt with stories of new technology.
It worked out well for us too: we were able to promote and perform an acoustic version of our new single, live, which was then immediately played back to us… without the use of tape. We had seen the future!
I managed to annoy the programme producers, but did endear myself to the people at Cheetah by dropping their name in at any possible moment (BBC have a strict “no advertising” policy!).
Cheetah in turn changed their name to Soundscape, and when my trusty Atari eventually couldn’t fulfill my needs, Nick Owen at Soundscape gave me a personal demonstration and that persuaded me to move up to a PC and Soundscape, and I’ve never looked back!
The support I’ve received from Soundscape has been invaluable too… not so much now, as throughout all the Mackie shenanigans I’ve slightly lost touch with the people behind the scenes, but it’s good that Carl Owen is still around to field annoying calls from me! Hopefully doing this interview will endear me to other members of staff whom I can annoy!
What is your current Soundscape setup?
I have two set-ups. Originally the Soundscape 8 track “Blue” (as I call it), which I bought in 1995, eventually upgrading it to 12 track.
Then a few years ago it was time to move up to Soundscape 32 track “Red” (again, my terminology!).
Rather than trade in my 12 track “Blue”, I decided to hold on to it as a kind of mobile set-up, which is fine for taking around the country to other people’s studio’s (rather than dismantling the “Red” from my home studio set-up everytime).
In fact I used it a couple of months ago when writing at Melanie C’s studio near Liverpool. She has an amazing Pro Tools set-up, but I was still happier getting the sketch of the songs down on my ‘Scape 12 Track, with Melanie’s vocal, which I then took, on a removable drive, to my own studio to work on, over-dub and mix.
My 32 track set-up is pretty basic, but that suits my needs. I have 8 outs from the “Red” coming in digitally to a Yamaha O1V Mixer (which can only take 8 ins digitally); this is fine for me, I tend to do most of the levels/EQs/mixing within the “Scape”, then I have, for instance, drums/loops/bass coming up on tracks 1-2 of the mixer, keys/fx on 3-4, guitars on 5-6, and vocals on 7-8, using mostly the mixer’s onboard fx.
This might seem very simple and lo-fi to some of your readers, but I think people get bugged down with plug-ins/fx/gadgets etc, and forget the song, the feel and the “vibe”!
Besides, it’s mainly demos that I do in my studio, and people say they sound great. I have a wonderful old Bechstein Grand piano, a Mini-Moog, a Fender Rhodes, a Wurlitzer piano, Phillicorda and Farfisa Organs, as well as a B3 Hammond… plus 2 Telecasters, a Gretsch Country Gent, John Lennon-style Rickenbacker, Precision Bass… Pod and AC30… all being warmed up by a Drawmer 1960 Valve compressor… what do I need plug-ins for!
Also I’m happy in the knowledge that my usual co-writing partner Guy Batson has every plug-in known to man, so I just burn the wav onto a CD and let him mess with it on his set-up. Then if we want to take the recordings further (for instance the current project with Marli Buck), we travel a few miles to my friend Ronnie Stone’s studio (Editor’s note: Ronnie Stone’s own “inFocus” interview is here). He has a bigger Soundscape and studio set-up with all separate outs etc, and I load in my removable drive and we mix there!
How do you manage to engineer and play instruments during the same session, and how does Soundscape help with that?
I spent a while getting the logistics of my studio just right…most instruments are within easy reach of the PC….though if I have to use the Bechstein piano or Wurli on the other side of the room or do some guitar/bass, I merely set up a record stack, take a few performances, then comp them. This suits my un-tutored and shambolic way of playing, as, with some careful comping, one can sound like Johnny Marr, Pino Palladino, or Jimmy Smith….well, nearly!
Do you also use large commercial studios?
Obviously with a small home studio, in a residential area, some things like drums, amped guitars or strings) are too inconvenient or just too plain loud for the neighbours; in which case I tend to go to Parr Street Studio in Liverpool – Ronnie Stone brings his Soundscape across and engineers the session, then I return to my studio to comp it all (or try and persuade Ronnie to edit 12 tracks of drums!). We recently did this on the Marli project, using Robin Goodridge, drummer from million selling band Bush. However, we managed to record all the strings for Marli’s album in my home, with long leads from the studio to the living room (making sure that the buzzing fridge was turned off in the next room, and that the seagulls didn’t make too much noise!).
As you can see from the above, I’m not your normal “tech-geek”, I’m not really an engineer at all; I just point an AKG 414 somewhere near the instrument and it seems to work… I’m a musician, writer and producer who got lucky, and Soundscape enables me to “keep on bluffin”!
 What are, to you, the most important aspects of a session and how does Soundcape fit with these priorities?
I think for me it’s got to be about getting the performance, capturing that magic… and a lot of that is down to making the artist/musician feel comfortable. I find that, in the old days, one would be trying to recreate the appeal of a home demo, mostly in vain.… especially with the added worry of how much the master session was costing. Nowadays systems like Soundscape have made “demo-itis” a thing of the past. In fact most of Marli’s album (vocals included) started as demos, therefore the songs retain that relaxed, spontaneous, experimentative feel, and we just re-did a few things, added fairy-dust, real drums and strings, and got them mixed properly.
Do you like editing a lot, or do you insist on getting a perfect take in one go?
If it’s me playing, then I’m rarely going to get the perfect take in one go… nine go’s, maybe!… but using some nifty mouse-work, I’ll get it!
I love editing… I don’t consider it a pain (well, maybe 12 tracks of drums gets a bit tedious). I treat the ‘Scape as an instrument. I liken the editing process to a game, a challenge to get the take to sound as though it was done in one go. This is even more fun when the session player or singer has left and you have to create a word, or note, using stretching, reversing, pitch change or whatever. And you play it back and nobody spots it!
 What projects are you currently working on?
I find my time now is split threeways between song-writing/production, music for TV/ads and my band The Christians.
Songwriting/production is either “with The Artist”, as in the situation with Marli, Melanie C and Mark Owen (I gained my first UK top 5 single in 2003 as a producer with Mark Owen’s “4 Minute Warning”….you guessed it, mostly edited on the ‘Scape), plus new Welsh Girl band TNT, or “speculative”: for instance last week I was with Guy Batson & Kavana, one of Simon Fuller’s “19” writers, and we wrote a song which they’re sending off to Enrique…..now wouldn’t that be nice!
Also through the EMI’s writers week I’ve written with the likes of
Graham Gouldman, Cathy Dennis, Lamont Dozier, Desmond Childs, Cerys Matthews, and newer writers Angela Hunte, Kavana, Steve Balsamo, and Esthero… (a song that Canadian artist Esthero & I wrote became the theme for the last James Bond Xbox game!). And I’ve carried on writing a lot especially with Steve and Graham, and would like to think I could give most of the above a ring and say “d’you fancy doing some writing by the seaside!”
As for soundtrack/TV work: Having worked on my own in the last 5 years doing the music for various BBC Wildlife Documentaries (Wildlife on One, The Natural World), I’ve recently decided to team up with fellow Soundscaper Ronnie Stone as “Old Rope Productions” to work on music for UK adverts. In the last year we’ve written and produced ads for Abu Dhabi Airways, Circulon Pans, Coop Bank, Yorkshire tourist board, and Philips eXpanium CD players.
Also I’ve worked with film director (and school-friend) Mark Herman on the title song and incidental music for his film “Blame it on the Bellboy” (starring Dudley Moore), and more recently the title song for his 2003 Minnie Driver/Heather Graham/Colin Firth film “Hope Springs” (sung by Roland Gift).
Finally, regarding The Christians: after disbanding for 5 years we got back together in 2000 to do a UK and Irish “Unplugged” tour, just the three original members Garry Christian (vocals) Russell Christian (piano, b.vocals) myself (guitar/accordion/b.vocals) and song-writer friend Paul Campbell also on guitar. The tour went so well that we try and tour once a year in UK and Europe, as well as recent high profile supports with the likes of James Brown, and the late Ray Charles. We’ve recently released our 4th album (all recorded and mixed on Soundscape) “Prodigal Sons”, and more info can be found on the band's website.
Even more recently, last week the three of us (as the Christians) sang backing vocals on Tom Jones’s new album to be released late 2004.
As you can see, I’m a happy “jack of all trades, master of none”, and I’ll carry on until people rumble that really I’m just a chancer! If I can do it, anyone can do it… especially with the aid of Soundscape!
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