Ronnie Stone is a producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist who works from his own studio in the UK, away from the capital, yet close to another big city that has a very special place in the history of pop music. He gives us a special insight into the Liverpool music scene, the making of stars, the business… and his views on Soundscape which is at the heart of his operation.
Ronnie, how did you first become interested in music?
I’m the youngest of a (much) older family. My sisters were into the Beatles, Stones, Everly Brothers and Elvis, so I grew up with this sort of Rock n Roll playing around the house. My grandfather had been a drummer so I had a proper snare drum to hit as a kid! My sisters used to have birthday parties in church halls and get a group to play so I’d be close up to a live band at 4 years old. They’d go to see the Beatles play in Liverpool just prior to them making it big in 1963 and be all excited about it, and I was taken to see Cliff and the Shadows for my 5th birthday. This must all help to send you along a certain path.
 Do you remember the first time you played an instrument?
My family, uncles and such, are quite musical and as a kid I watched my sister (14 years older than me) playing the piano. She gave it up after 8 years playing so the folks weren’t too keen on me following into music! I tried the piano but as a toddler my hands were too small and the groups on the telly all had guitars, so that was what I wanted and had to wait for. It wasn’t until I was in my second school, say 13-14 that I was allowed to get a real instrument. My uncle was a dab hand at loads of instruments, and he encouraged me to try, even though he was a hard act to follow. I sat in as a 13 year old with a local school band whose guitarist failed to show for a rehearsal, so the bass player moved over and let me jam on bass. It was a 3-4 note thing he showed me and I had the rhythm off straight away and did my best. I think the band was amused but I was totally hooked on the whole thing! I went and took all my childhood savings and bought a Hofner President and started practising. By the time I was in my final year at school I was going in, doing the register then heading home with my makeshift band of fellow “missing persons”.
So… what instruments do you play now?
Guitar, bass, keys, drums, banjo, Turkish Saz (a favourite from a hol, gave myself 10 minutes to see if I could master the quartertones and the tuning and got a tune out of it) and bit of everything with strings on it really.
Was it inspirational to live so close to Liverpool? There is history here of course.
Obviously. There’s an unwritten law up here where you have to be as good as “that band” (Beatles). Every band I was in auditioned hard for the right people and rehearsed to death. When years later, as an engineer, I worked with a later version of Gerry and the Pacemakers and was astonished at how quick they worked, a track in less than 2 hours! Studio time in Gerry’s day was about being “live” and I guess, really expensive. Gerry was very helpful as he’s actually a great guitarist of his era and knew some of the Geoff Emerick miking technique’s employed in the 60’s. Great Merseybeat stories too. The bands I played in all tried to be the next “big thing” out of Liverpool, but in the tradition there’s only certain types of band that get to the top. In the end it’s the bands that emulate the early era of the Beatles that seem to stick, like the La’s and the Coral, very early Beatles, and Shack (formerly Pale Fountains), the Real People (Oasis’s mentors and cousins) and Space, mid era Beatles. We were lucky that Liverpool was a major gig in the 70’s and 80’s, so we could get cheap tickets at the (now demolished) Stadium and see bands like Pink Floyd, Captain Beefheart, David Bowie and such. Good learning.
What was your first “serious” band?
My first worthy band went through several name changes (Strange Band being the most descriptive of us) until we arrived at “Next” and proceeded to arrogantly go after a deal, which we got within a year. We had a keyboard player early on, so we learned more about chord structure than the more straightforward guitar band around us. I remember we auditioned for weeks to get the right drummer, who was 10 years older than us and felt like your dad! He was so good though and that helped immensely.
You were very young when you were signed to a major label for the first time. How did that happen?
We met a local entrepreneur’s son who was about to resurrect the recording scene in Liverpool. He’d gone to college with members of Queen, had a 4-track in his cellar and recorded Deaf School (future producer Clive Langer’s band) and was determined to bring professional recording facilities to Liverpool. We came along at the right time, as a great band with a big local following, so that helped us both to “short cut” the time factor, as he provided the recording equipment to make our first demos. He bought Liverpool’s only original demo studio, called Liverpool Sound House and he changed the name to Amazon and it was on the edge of a disused airfield in Kirkby. The story goes the Beatles had done demos on the original gear in the 60’s when it was in town. The first “nearly proper” gear there was converted early warning 8-track recording equipment. It worked in a fashion so that was ok by us all! In recording and gigging to build a following, we actually turned a couple of smaller deals down and waited a further 6 months (seems nothing now, seemed like, for ever as a 17 year old with parents screaming “get a job”!), until CBS (about to become Sony) came to see us and offered us the right deal. Genesis’s management offered to tour us and eventually gave us some publishing to run the band with. Once when my gear failed I was able to borrow Genesis’s guitar rig, can you imagine the looks the band would get in 1979 with Genesis stencilled all over my backline! It was the after punk era and we were touring with Adam and the Ants and the Stranglers! Not cool! Amazon finally matured into an influential studio in the 80’s with James, Smiths, Bunnymen, Teardrops, Lotus Eaters, China Crisis, OMD, Dead or Alive, Holly Johnson (Frankie’s), Flock of Seagulls, and even Deep Purple coming up the M6 to record. It’s now Parr Street studios, having moved back into town 10 years ago and famous again for Space, Mansun and Coldplay albums.
And were you interested in production and engineering at that time?
I loved my first ever day in a studio! I’d messed about with a home tape recorder (my sisters') and used to imagine you double tracked things, without knowing that’s what you did. In the studio the engineer asked if I wanted to double track my guitar parts and I knew what he wanted so did it. The studio people acted like it was normal and so did I, but I was shitting myself! When they invited me into the control room I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! Later in a record deal we worked with people like Rupert Hine and Tony Visconti who opened my eyes to all the possibilities of recording. I even tape ‘opped in my first week in The Manor, Virgin’s flagship studio when the second engineer was ill. The bug was getting bigger!
Did you tour a lot?
Yeah, In the early 80’s that’s what it was all about, gigging to get a following, then someone at the label could take your case to radio and they might support you with airplay. We toured out of the country as “Next” (signed to CBS/Sony), then “Afraid of Mice” (Signed to Chrysalis/Virgin), playing Reading festival and supporting the Cars, Police, Status Quo and Motorhead, until the touring got a bit too much for me as it wasn’t leading to British national radio support, as we were seen as being big in the wrong areas! At this time a friend’s band fell out with their guitarist and they asked me to put some stuff on their first record. It led to me doing some 4-track and 8-track “production” (all after being in 24/48-track studios with my former bands) but the record was an indie hit and really made me realise what I’d picked up from being with really big producers who knew what they wanted and how to get that out of you. I also realised the power of the indie scene as I later formed a studio based, indie band (Freeze Frame) that got radio 1 sessions and a deal off BMG without so much hardship. Fellow band members came and went at that time, as did collaborators, but we did have producer Gil Norton and comedian & Red Dwarf* star Craig Charles in and out of the conspiracy! I got to work with more influential people at this time, Dave Bascombe one of the worlds top mix engineers being one of them.
* Translator’s note: Hilarious British TV comedy series set in a red spaceship called “Red Dwarf”.
How was the transition between being a signed artist and being a producer? Have you always kept busy?
Doing bits as a side member of China Crisis, miming on the telly, doing their live sound. Even did a stint as a session player on Granada Reports, a North West news show that had a guest artist on at the end singing with a studio band. Eventually got my own deal after another indie single became a favourite, championed by John Peel at Radio 1, who gave us BBC sessions for his show, as did other DJ’s of the time. All of this made me feel I wasn’t lucky, more a grafter who was aiming to learn more. I’d take on any job and try to put my “everything” behind it. I always kept a hand in studio-work at Amazon, and eventually went to Chester’s Studio 1 to be head engineer there and work with new (to me) talent. I gave up playing to concentrate on recording and got hits with Pele and River City People, who were managed by Miles Copeland, he of the Police (manager and drummer’s older brother). He gave me loads of work, Night of the Guitars being one thing, recording legendary guitarists for an album. I met and started to work with the Bee Gees’ keyboardist and top London fairlight programmer, Gary Moberley. Whilst at Studio 1 I met a lot of the early big Welsh bands and forged a great friendship with people like Rhys Mwyn, the main guy for Welsh contacts as he is now who regularly wins their “Man of the Year” for the effort he’s put into the scene. I met him first time on New Year’s day 1987 when we were all hung over and recording the “Tube goes to Portmerion” for a TV special. On that day I met people who were up and coming in Wales and would become bands like Catatonia, Manic etc……………one day!
I’d bounce between major influential bands like The Pixies and Throwing Muses and unknown bands, as long as there was talent there I was there.
Famously for me, I was going to a £20 per day studio in 1991, working on a friend’s track and being asked to stay on and help the owner of the little studio try to finish mixing his first record. This I did and headed off to a quiet Irish studio for 6 weeks with a hot Irish act (Picturehouse), returning to find “Insanity” by Oceanic, the nation’s favourite record that year. Pre mobile phones, I had no idea until I got home and a friend said “put the telly on now and look”. There they were, from 20 quid a day studio to national stardom in one.
You have been in this business for a long time. What do you think of its evolution and prospects?
At first it was hard to let go of the major studio thing. I’d grown up with it, staff everywhere and you felt assured, but living in London and seeing Gary Moberley having a basic fairlight sampler (state of the art in the 80’s and ridiculously pricey) I was realising what you could do without tape or even studio, as we’d prepare stuff back at his then head down to the session. The level of stars who could pop round to his and put some stuff down was incredible. With Oceanic at the other end of the scale, their gear must have cost 2 grand, if that, and they sat at Number 3 in the charts for about 10 weeks using an Akai sampler and an Atari games computer on a 12 channel desk. It constantly reminded you that you can make good music anywhere if you have the time and patience.
And how do you see the role of producer evolving?
In my case, I can be there to encourage people if they need it and these days, if they have their own set-ups I’d go there and work with them in their own comfort and transfer to my studio further down the line. I had a good experience in finding and developing Mansun for EMI, where there was only ever one version of each of their tracks, the demos becoming the master, so to speak. Their career with me got 9 hit singles and the first album “Attack of the Grey Lantern” was Number 1 from this process, so this really pushed me further down the road of capturing something early and the arrival of what was soon to be called “wave editing” was the most important development since the electric guitar to me.
Do you like to play everything on a project?
Don’t care if I do or don’t! I love working with talented people so can assist them play the parts better through encouragement rather that taking over. I “play” the recorded parts later when rearranging through editing and programming or reprogramming a basic idea until it’s something special.
Is it easy to keep busy while enjoying life in a small town?
I wouldn’t call Liverpool a small town! I’m in a quieter area but just 5 minutes away by car from the centre, and that’s better for the bands to work. You would be surprised at the level of hidden studios in this area. The houses are former 19th century Merchants’ houses, from the docks era of Liverpool, really big places, so they get grabbed up by people who want an out of town place. The Real People’s studio’s very close to me, and they work with everyone themselves, amazing who you see in the chip shop! When I lived in London there were too many distractions from your daily work outside the studio door. You can get caught up in a lifestyle too easily. I’ve just finished a Morrison’s national peak time ad campaign and I’m just finishing mixing an album for Marli from Fame Academy (national TV show) and in all cases being out of the way has suited all parties. I tend to travel to jungles (South America and Malaysia) and do crazy stuff on holiday to make up for it!
 Does most of your work come from London and the majors, or is there a lot going in Liverpool at the moment?
My work comes from anywhere in this world. Adverts in Japan, bands signed to Japanese and US labels, recording touring US bands, London and Manchester TV and recording stuff, Wales is a big market these days with their own language and TV station and of course Ireland. We are working with a new girl group, TNT, who are breaking from Wales, always a buzz to see new talent going for it for the first time. TNT got their first glossy cover yesterday and that’s just a lift to us all as they are a Soundscape produced band!
When did you decide to have your own studio?
It came along as a natural development of having my own gear to go to studios with, in the end you have so much gear, you don’t need the studio costs and your own transport costs, rather your own mixing console to run the stuff through. So it started as a kind of demo come editing room and just grew. Once the Soundscape arrived it got its nickname “Area 51”, in homage to the secret US base, as my gear seemed so advanced compared to local studios.
The place is hard to find and the equipment remains part flight cased, ready to be moved, so there was a time (not now) when you could come here and there’s no gear! Funnily enough, the road I’m on is technically the B5151 and the phone area is 0151, which is England’s Area 51 anyway, but that’s a coincidence.
At what point and how did you discover Soundscape?
Through the band the Christians. They had a very original 8-track version, pre plug ins and I got the gig to do some engineering for them. They are a big soul harmony band and I remember thinking, “how will I do this” on the first morning. No worries, they walked in with a Soundscape and to my astonishment, this little box had this huge harmony thing pre recorded and my first job was, with their assistance, to tidy up and print out what was already recorded back at their place. I couldn’t believe the music we were making, cutting up at ease, live takes from Gary, the deep voiced lead singer with the band. I’d just got some real money working on the hits with Mansun and decided to plough it into this gear.
 How important is Soundscape to your work now?
Six years on, and a 12 and 32-track Editor later, I can’t overstate the importance of this equipment in my daily work. I know digital editing so well now (I was a tape man) I can hear the failings of other, sometimes more expensive equipment in records. Anything that uses a computer, being a Mac or a PC, as its core operating system, can’t possibly be beyond the failings of its host device. A stand-alone editor can run perfectly in time. Nothing else can. You will never know this until you have spent time with each system. I have grown up with everything from Roland drum machines through all known major systems. As the Soundscape grew to 32-track it started to compete with major studios “in total” in my mind, I still think people are nuts spending thousands of pounds to be in studios like Abbey Road studios, a second longer than they need to, if at all.
I’d go to a big studio to use the mikes they might have, to record a drum kit. With Robin out of Bush (recently up in Parr St to record drums for the Marli project), he’s got top class drums, so you need about 20 top class mikes to record them with. I run with the R.Ed system as the multitrack using my Soundscape through the Scape’s A to D boxes and then bring the kit back to my studio, where I can sift through and edit the takes, interfacing the new recordings with the project’s original music, that, in this case, was recorded in Henry Priestmans studio in Wales, on a R.Ed system. This meant we were moving hard drives around the country in the end, popping in and out of 4 locations, a Soundscape in each place. I mixed the results in my studio having recorded the desired people and parts.
To work like this, top quality and maybe 2 days in a drum room studio versus the old days of 9 months bookings. Yes to the S’cape!
What other recording and editing systems do you know or use?
Cubase, all versions, Logic Audio, Sonic Solutions, Pro Tools, Radar, the Fairlight. I can or have used them all. Sonic Solutions is very good but is the dearest by far and more for film making. Pro Tools is for pop, Logic and Cubase for the extreme dance heads and I think Soundscape can cover all these bases, giving you a flexibility to move about. Yesterday I was working to fast cuts on a TV advert, running at 1000th of a frame accuracy. Tomorrow it may be a Slipknot type band like Fear & Loathing, simply “power on”. You can move through these genres easily.
My main Soundscape equipment is the Red 32-track with most of the plug ins, running on a Tascam DM 8000 desk that’s been upgraded by Tascam. I used a twin processor 1.6 Ghz PIII Pentium with firewire, and Mixtreme cards in, so I can transfer the AVI files into the Soundscape for total accuracy when doing TV work. It’s testament to the system that I’ve had this unit for five years now and it’s been upgraded for free by Soundscape all through it’s life, so is still as competitive as it was in 1998 when it came out. Imagine how many Logic Audio or Pro Tools systems you could have bought and sold in that period, as the mother computer unit dated and they revamped the hardware in every new version! Apparently the G5 Mac can’t run the G4’s plug-ins, so I’m told. Good idea, I think not!
As a multi-instrumentalist… do you always try to get the perfect performance, from yourself and others?
From others, where possible, dunno about me! I know how far I need to go playing-wise and let the Soundscape’s fantastic editing system make me sound great! I’m happy editing a capella performances even knowing you can’t hear the joins. Working with real pro stars like Sara Cracknell from St Etienne, she recorded some vocals for a solo album in a living room (on a Soundscape) where there was a room sound that she liked, and I remember thinking that this uncontrolled ambience would be near impossible to edit without this system.
So you enjoy editing in Soundscape?
The editing will always astonish me! What the brain hears after what you know you have done, seamless! Doing TV work, they will often get hooked on some musical part to the ad and want it transferred into other versions, in other time signatures, keys etc, and it’s no problem! I can’t see the difference between mixing, remixing, editing and recording these days because of this system. I have recorded tracks where different people have played the same guitar or drumkit on different days and we’d comp a version from these different people, as the sound would be fairly constant but the “feel” moving between players would be a breath or fresh air.
Do you also use Soundscape for mixing?
Absolutely! It allows me to shape all performances individually and together making for a huge balanced musical sound. None of this pushing faders when you can arrange the “lift” desired within the recorded material. It’s always gonna “happen” on any desk you plug the system into. The fact that a total recall save, with a desk of the same capabilities, means you can be doing one thing, save, move on, and come back later when you are ready to carry on with that recording, and you are always absolutely where you were, 100%.
You only ever do things once and aren’t in competition with yourself when arranging or editing, mixing etc, as you can append the “best of” previous versions into the arrangement at any stage and come up with a winner.
Do you ever get remarks or questions about the system, from artists or other producers?
Always, the comments you can get because “outsiders” think it’s PC based (an on-board program only) soon fall away when you are cutting and pasting from nineteen, 24bit, 16-mike takes from a kit or moving a kit from one song to another, time correcting along the way. People, especially good musicians, love the way it appears like there’s nothing to it, and, after a while, there’s isn’t, you can employ your taste rather than constantly checking to make sure you ain’t deleted something accidentally, that can’t happen in the non-destructive editing system that the Soundscape provides. Musicians see this as an aid to get what they are after, not a device to “dance you up” as some systems carry that monicker.
 You are involved in several high profile projects at the moment. What can you tell us about them?
I’m just at the end of Marli’s album. She did really well in Fame Academy and there’s huge promise for her future from the guys who count in the music biz. Star players like Christian from BB Mac, Robin from Bush, Mac from Echo & the Bunnymen, Henry and Guy, (the writers for hits for Christians St Etienne and Republika) and many more, contributed to make a great album. There will be tie-ins with some of the guys in the future as we all had such a good time on this one.
What’s good for business is when you hear that Connie Lush, top blues female in this country has just won, with my production assistance, the top blues female in Europe for her latest album, and been entered into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame for winning five top blues in England awards. All recorded and mixed on Soundscape since our first record together four albums ago. Apparently the French give you a medal for it! Fantastic!
How about work with other studios or the BBC and the like? Is it easy to exchange files?
Absolutely. In TV, whether doing documentary series for the BBC (I’ve done a couple for BBC2) or high profile big budget ads (I’ve done about 30 in the last 18 months, and have been asked to do as much as I can). The material has to go from me to whatever system is required, and back to me again. The import and export controls, especially to Pro Tools is fine, works every time, and that’s all you care about when under pressure to deliver. We did the Commercial TV to the build up for the Commonwealth Games 2001 on Soundscape, again, we had to deliver and no time for fuck-ups.
Do you enjoy every project you work on?
Nearly! It’s people that make or break your day, not the music. If the music’s good and the people are flakey, you can put up with that for the “sake of the song”, if you like. I don’t really mind what level I’m supposed to function on in a session. With a deal I have with Zomba Music, they brief me up, as do the TV advert people and you send them a rough of what you think they mean. Once we’re all shouting from the same tree you can go off into the lost world of creativity. On pop sessions where I may be the mix engineer/producer, I’m there to create something that exists in the writer’s mind from what’s been recorded, or be prepared to re-record stuff to achieve that. If it’s a label that’s employing you to sort out a remix, they will either let you do your own thing or direct you to where they see the record existing and what we need to do to achieve that. Similar to the writer’s approach, but chances are, each will in turn, love or hate what you did, as it’s nearly impossible to please everyone when there’s more than one chief!
On a very big project I did a couple of years ago, the spending got to nearly £800.000 whilst they pushed and pulled between creative controllers within the company and the artists. In these cases, no one likes the finished thing, as there’s nothing left in it for anyone. These types of sessions are good to have your own serious editing systems for. On this one, a very famous legendary producer just carried on recording until he was technically 120-track analogue. Impossible! I had to use my R.Ed system to sift through the lot and reduce it to 24 tracks of useful information, then add a further 24 tracks of new stuff with the artists to make the record what was intended. A technical nightmare brought under control by the S’cape.
How do you see your future as a producer?
I want to move the studio to a designer location. Build a building that’s custom to where I think it’s going. I know so much now about the needs of people in studios and equipment needs and there’s a joining of several types of recording taking place these days as TV, Pop, DVD, all collide with instant web needs. When I did the BBC2 series “Birdman”, I was working on the footage every day from the shoots and deriving the tracks from it for the six part series, one hour special, accompanying album, eighty-five televised pieces and nineteen songs from the same source. Trying to hit visual points, then keep the emotion for a normal song without the vision and it translates into a song.
This has to be “documentary meets rock” and suggests that things will go this way more and more, with the reality TV shows. I did the Welsh Pop Idol stuff and at one point the TV people were following the winner about as she went through her daily life, which included coming to me to record the winning song! Just me, her, the co-writer and a seven-men TV crew! The Studio of the future has to expect the unexpected, real performers one minute, animatics the next, and our trusty wave editor jumping onto the tail of whatever the format’s coming at you, locking to it and allowing you to do your thing with ease and confidence. If there’s one word I’d use to describe a Soundscape it’s confidence. You know it’s not going to crash at all and it’s down to you, which is why we all got into this business in the first place!
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