This producer and engineer should be well known for fans of Yes and ELP. He has also worked with Taste, Rory Gallagher, Baker Gurvitz Army, Blackjack and a whole bunch of other bands. He has forever written his name into the annals of rock history.
Read on!
Musicians Talk Tape
This week: Eddie Offord YES engineer
By Fred Dellar
Eddie Offord is probably the best-known recording engineer in rock, thanks mainly to his work with ELP and Yes. Previously he also worked with Terry Reid and Heads, Hands and Feet, then accepted an offer to become Yes`s full-time engineer around the time when they made “Fragile”. Since then his handling of the sound mixer at the band`s concerts has been an integral part of their success.
During a break the band recently took from recording “Tales From The Tobergraphic Ocean”, their forthcoming double-album, I dropped in at Offord`s sumptuous London flat to listen to some of the material via Harmon-Kardon stereo cassette player.
Yes sounded gutsier than I’ve ever heard them before – Offord claims Alan White’s drumming has much to do with this — and I don’t remember Chris Squires’ bass work ever being so well recorded.
Eddie pushes the dolbyied cassette sound through a Quad amplifier and two studio-type JBL speakers suspended from the ceiling. The result is spectacular and the complete answer to anyone who still feels that cassettes are incapable of genuinely hi-fi performance.
Nevertheless, Eddie, ever the perfectionist, apologised.
“This sound’s a little rough – and we’ve still got lots of overdubs and things to do. Also, Jon’s vocal on this track is only a guideline for the band… here’s the part where the whole band, with the exception of Rick, who’s on mellotron, play percussion. This is really primitive, a kind of Aztec thing.
“It’s the last part of the album, in actual fact. I can’t remember the name of the song – each side features a complete song — but the others are “Dance Of The Dawn”, which is an uptempo thing, “High The Memory”, a sweet, simple, melodic side, and “Giants Under The Sun”, a kinda spacey affair.”
Offord also owns a Revox stereo reel-to-reel machine but he’ll soon be exchanging it for a four-track Teac which he’ll use in conjunction with the revolutionary mixer he’s just finished building.
“Basically it’s a 30-channel mixer which I’ll use together with a 24-track machine for recording purposes. The mixer is in three boxes and I’ve also got 24 of the latest Dolby units plus three racks of special effects.
It’s all very portable and I can take this equipment on the road and tour with the band, do P.A. for them — in quadrophonic, I can feed in prerecorded sounds from the Teac and fan them out in any direction or even send them in a figure of eight around a hall, just at the touch of a button.
“On the 24-track machine I’ll be recording every Yes performance live — then the band won’t get any recording paranoia or suchlike.
“In a three week tour you only get about three dates when a band hits top form. If you record about three or four concerts only, you can bet you’ll miss all the best gigs. We’re not going to do that.
“I think bands sound best `live’. Recording studios are too dead, the sound gets all sucked up by the walls. Snare drums never sound right – there’s no reverb. Another problem is the time element — you cannot turn on creativity at the turn of a studio clock. “No one would have asked Picasso to start work at 2 o’clock and paint a masterpiece by five. The move away from London by such country-based studios as Manor and Rockfield is a step in the right direction but they still cost a lot of bread and each time you step out for a walk in the fields you feel pretty guilty. “So the atmosphere’s all wrong. I’m looking for a farm-house, somewhere just out of London, and there I’m going to set all my equipment up when Yes aren’t touring, and I’ll offer accommodation to bands who want to come up and record. “I take a royalty on all the records I make and I won’t charge the bands for studio time — I’ll just take my royalty on the completed record. “Ths way, if I do an album with a band, they can come up and hang around for a couple of months in relaxing conditions — and there’ll be no hassles. “Every artist who makes a lot of bread eventually sets up his own studio — Stevie Stills, Neil Young, Lennon, Harrison — they all know this is the only way. “Another point about my set-up — there’ll be no control-room. I`ll be right there, with the band, and I`ll have four massive speakers surrounding us. When I record the drummer, I`ll record him flat at first, then he can come and sit down at the desk and we’ll discuss how he wants to sound.
“By varying tone and balance controls we can obtain his exact requirements. Then all I have to do is to flick a few swiches and from thereon, that’s the sound that’s going on tape — it’s going to be a gas.
“And if people want to record anywhere else, a church, a cinema or even the Albert Hall, I can just pack up my equipment and take it where they want it.”
As Yes will only be touring for around three months of the year from now on, Eddie will have plenty of time to indulge in recording. At home he doesn’t listen to a lot of music, he still prefers recording jams by visiting musicians.
His tape cupboard is stacked with reels recorded by people who drop in from time to time. He has a mike suspended from a track that traverses his lounge, and people like Joe Jammer, Wendell Richardson and Bob Fripp, all frequent visitors to Eddie’s — “I like to entertain” — have all had their talents documented on the Revox.
Offord even recorded a Jehovah’s Witness who merely decided to devote a few words of wisdom to the erring Mr. Offord then found herself part of a fully-fledged recording session.
Professionally, Offord recently mixed Wendell’s album for MCA and was also involved on Claire Hamill’s sessions at the Manor — where she laid down a couple of tracks — one of her own songs and one of Jon Anderson’s — with back-up aid from most of Yes.
“It was hoped that we could do Claire’s next album,” he says. “The tracks sounded better than anything she’s previously done. Chris Blackwell was there and he was leaping around and clapping his hands.”
Then Eddie switched on the Revox and played back the results of Hamill’s sessions. And I didn’t take any more notes after that. I mean – how can you when you’re leaping around and clapping your hands?
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