Right Said Fred – Fran Ashcroft

Right Said Fred
By Fran Ashcroft

A couple of weeks back I had the pleasure of working at Redchurch studios with the irrepressible, excellent Fred Baggs. Fred has a similar background to my own, and has produced some notable recordings in his own right (Mike – do a vid!), but on this session he’d be engineering for me. We spoke at length on the phone prior to recording about everything from sourcing tape to mic placement – the importance of preparation for a fast paced analogue session was certainly not lost on him.

The agenda was for two, back to back, one day tracking sessions. Neither band had recorded on tape before, so the musicians had to adopt a different way of working than they were used to – most of all playing together live, as a unit. No iso booths, no headphones. Performance is everything working like this, and as a producer you may have to use every trick in the book to achieve the right result. An often overlooked component is the power structure of a session.

Producers who are aware of this will exploit it for the good of the project, and the engineer is integral, in his unique position as buffer between producer and artist.

There’s no escaping the fact the a producer is an authority figure, so artists tend to look upon a friendly and accomodating engineer as an ally.  He is perceived as a conduit by which a producer can be persuaded (though this is not true, ha ha!).

This artist / engineer dynamic is invaluable for defusing conflicts, and getting the most from a performer. A skilled producer knows this, cracking the whip at times – dumbkopf! – then letting the engineer offer comfort and reassurance.  It’s a variation on the good cop / bad cop routine. I’m the bad cop, naturally.

Both bands were impressed by the rapport between Fred and myself and asked, “how long have you two been working together?”.
Since last Friday!

Towards the end of our sessions Fred said to me, “it’s been great working with you, really took the pressure off having to do everything myself”.

“Funny you should say that,” I replied, “I was just about to tell you the same thing…”