“This pic was taken in April 1984 when we were mixing “Dreamtime” at Pete Townsend’s Eel Pie Studio in London. I’m listening back to a tape of the album (on a boom box) with Ian and the band’s manager at the time, Martin Horne, as it was a good way to hear how the finished music would sound to people in their own homes as compared to the fantastic professional speakers in the studio.
Martin was actually our long time for tour agent (right up to 1995) who just happened to be managing us for a short period around "Dreamtime".
Here’s a couple of interesting facts on the recording that not many people know… firstly in the pre digital days of analogue the trick to getting the phased sound on a track was to place an ashtray on one of the spools of the recording tape so that it would run slightly out of synch with the other spool and that’s exactly what we did for “Go West”.
The other fact was that when we had finished the whole album it was actually 60 seconds short of the legal requirement to be classified as a “long player” recording. So, what we did in the studio was double the outro section of the track Dreamtime to help it hit the magic 40 minutes!!!”
Billy – June 2020
Photo by Mick Peek