1. When did you start to work in the music industry, and what were you doing firstly ?

I started to learn guitar when I was twelve years old and was playing in amateur bands whilst still at school. When I left school my Mother insisted that I have a "proper" job and sent me for an interview at a small Radio and Television retailers shop in Wallington, Surrey.
I got the job of junior apprentice and was sent to Day Release College to be trained as a Radio & TV service engineer.
I was fifteen at the time and the senior apprentice; a guy named Derek Hill was twenty-one.
Derek and I became friends when we discovered we were both in bands or groups as we called them then.
He was a singer and told me that his lead Guitarist was amazing and suggested that one lunchtime we go round his place for a Jam.
The guitarist was amazing and I was a pretty good bass player so we had a good jam and became friends.
We used to hang out together going to gigs etc.
The amazing guitarist eventually joined the "Yardbirds", from there he went on to join the "Rod Stuart Band". His name was Jeff Beck!
I stared my "proper" working career as a Television Service Engineer repairing TV's in people's homes.
I attended college at Carshalton, Surrey and became one of the first qualified Colour TV service engineers in the UK.
I worked for various companies during my early working years. The last job I had in that industry was a very easy one and I had a lot of free time. I went round all the studios in South London offering to work for nothing but was refused. Around 1975 I eventually, got a job working as a part time maintenance engineer at TMC studios in Tooting South London.

2. What was your very first record ?

When I was about 15yrs old I was the bass player in a band called "The Black Cats". We entered a "Beat Group Competition" (a very old fashioned term) at the Carshalton Park Carnival. We were joint winners with a rival group (also our friends) called "The Remainder".
The prize was two hours recording time in R.G. Jones Studio in Morden, Surrey.
We recorded an old Rhythm and Blues title called "Too Much Monkey Business".
As we were not signed to a record company it was never released.
A bit of trivia: "The Remainder" changed their name to "Mud" and had several Glam Rock hits in the seventies including the number one "Tiger feet". Rob Davis, Mud's lead guitarist, often used to play in our band when we were short of a band member.
He is now a writer and coincidentally co-wrote Kylie's "Can't get you out of my head".

Regarding my first proper release:
During my time working at TMC I met some very good musicians. The first was Phil Turner, a brilliant 17-year-old drummer. The second was keyboard player Nick Bailey later to be known as Nick Straker of the Nick Straker Band. With me on bass, and my Scottish friend Andy Gerius on guitar, we started a band playing small pubs and clubs. However, none of us were brilliant singers and we needed someone good out front. As luck would have it, whist I was engineering a demo session at TMC, I met a black American singer named Limmie Frank Snell. Limmie was the best singer I had ever met, he was amazing !
He had come to England to tour with his group Limmie and the Family Cooking after the success of their three hits "You Can Do Magic", "Dreamboat" and "He's a Walking Miracle" all on the Avco Label. In the USA Limmie had been the front man in his group while his two sisters were his backing singers. The group never made it in the US however; they did have hits over here.
Their first UK hit was "You Can Do Magic" which featured his sister on Lead Vocals. Because of the success of the first record, the girls also sang the second and third singles, which left Limmie on backing vocals. He didn't like that!!
After a year the group broke up and his sisters went back to the USA. By this time Limme had found a girlfriend and stayed behind in the UK. By the time I met Limmie he was a bit broke and doing nothing. I asked him if he fancied doing a few gigs with our band to earn some money. He agreed and we had a couple of rehersals, which went brilliantly. We named our band "Limmie Funk Ltd".
We found an agent and started doing gigs around Europe
(Incidentally our roady was a guitarist friend of Phil Towner named Tony Mansfield later the founder of the band "New Musik").
We eventually got a deal with Polydor Records and our first and only record to be released was "Soul Rules OK!" I'm not sure exactly which year it was but it was around 1977. The band only lasted two years; unfortunately Limmie kept getting drunk and was very difficult to work with at times. Eventually he went back to America. The rest of us started making demos at TMC in studio downtime and the bands The Nick Straker Band and New Musik were taking shape. The next proper record release I had was probably one of the many (unaccredited) Reggae records that I engineered at TMC or it possibly could have been "The Touch" by Judge Dread (which was also my debut playing drums).

3. When exactly did you join PWL and why ?

I joined PWL in November 1987.
Pete Waterman and I had known each other since 1979 when I was engineering albums at TMC for "The Lambrettas" and "The Piranhas" with the producer Peter Collins.
Pete Collins and Pete Waterman had a production company called "Loose Ends" of which I was also a 10% shareholder.
At that time I had a lot of clients and realised that I needed my own studio. In 1982 I bought 50% of the shares in "The Workhouse" studio in The Old Kent Road, London. The other 50% were owned by 60's star Manfred Mann !
I had not been working with Peter Collins for some time (he disliked TMC, it was a bit of a dump) so I phoned Peter as soon as I had completed my deal with Manfred.
He said, "Great! I need you to mix a 12inch for a new Reggae band". The band was "Musical Youth".
It was the first record that I made in The Workhouse and soon went to Number one.
Other number one records to come out of my studio were "Wherever I Lay My Hat" by Paul Young and "China In Your Hand" by T'Pau.
At that time Pete Waterman was working for MCA publishing and had met Mike and Matt when they had turned up at his office with a song called "The Upstroke". The three of them teamed up and started working at The Marquee Studios with Phil Harding.
Pete then built his own studio at The Borough and called it "PWL"
(he also poached most of the staff from The Marquee including Phil Harding).
Soon after the success of "Princess" Phil asked Pete Waterman for royalties for mixing any future SAW records.
Pete told him that that was not possible so Phil refused to mix any more SAW tracks.
At that time my friend Safta Jaffery of Dodgy Productions was managing me.
I was very busy working with many people including Glen Tilbrook from "Squeeze", Jimmy Lee from "Slade" and the bands
"Doctor and the Medics" and "Latin Quarter". Pete Waterman kept asking me if I could come over to his place and mix some records for him, but I had no time. I recommended several engineers too him but none were creative enough to be able to make sense of the numerous tracks of sounds that Mike and Matt recorded on each record.
(Phil Harding once used the term unmixable to describe a SAW track).
Around October 1987 my workload had eased and my contract with Safta came to an end.
I wanted something new to do so I phoned Pete Waterman. I will never forget his words "Get yourself down here and mix yourself a hit !"
After mixing three or four tracks Pete asked me to join PWL permanently.
He also told me he wanted to manage me however; he insisted that I work in his studio.
We agreed some basic terms and shook hands. There was never a contract between us.
Manfred Mann and I later sold The Workhouse to Pete Waterman and a few months later it sadly burnt down.

TO BE CONTINUED...