A
Brief History Of Kings Lane Studio
When
The Aliens (with
Pierre Baroni) moved up to Sydney from Melbourne in late 1980
we were looking for somewhere to rehearse. Our friend the artist/sculptor
John Ladyman (and brother of my wife Jude) had a studio on the
second floor of the old abandoned Sargent's Bakery in Darlinghurst
which was bordered by Bourke St., Burton St., Palmer St. and
Kings Lane. He told us about the old refrigeration room out
the back in Kings Lane that was being used as a rehearsal room
by a band called "Atla" and when they left we took
it over. Although it seemed barely habitable, we did a bit of
cleaning up and that became our rehearsal room.
Then
The Aliens broke up and although unaccustomed to manual labour,
I went away and worked on a building site for a few months and
saved enough money to renovate and refurbish the place, building
walls and installing air-conditioning, carpets and soundproofing.
In the brief period before the studio became a recording facility
it was a rehearsal room. I had had unending noise complaints from
"Ian The Potter", who lived in the derelict terraces
above us, so I was determined to seal it properly.
The
first band ever to use the brand new space was a trio called
Viola Dana which consisted of Peter
Blakely - vocal/guitar, Mal Green (ex-Split Enz) on drums,
and Chris Bailey (ex-Angels) on
bass. The new varnish inside the airtight studio hadn't quite
dried when I rented them the room and I must say they emerged
a little shaky with a greenish tinge when I came to let them
out three hours later. Jude and I rented a house at 58 Thomson
St. Darlinghurst which was at the top of Kings Lane on the other
side of Bourke St. which was very convenient.
I
had heard through Bryon Jones (pre- Rockmelons)
of a fellow called Gary Kurzer who owned a lot of recording
equipment. Gary was an architect but he was also a musician
and we came to an arrangement where by I provided the space
and he provided the gear and we split the proceeds. His original
8-track and later the 16-track (Fostex B-16) was a great improvement
on the 4-track cassette deck I had been using to that point.
Although I'd never had any training as a sound engineer, I learnt
as I went along.
Although
the dream of owning a recording studio was primarily about having
somewhere to record my own music, it became so popular so quickly
that all the paid recording I was doing for others plus my live
band commitments left me scant time to use it for my own ends.
In fact by 1985 I was touring with GANGgajang so much that I
had to bring other people in to run it for me. Initially it
was the inspiring Jeff Cook (who also did some engineering)
and later Ian Amos, who tried in vain to run a tighter ship
and increase our return.( I produced an album for Ian's band,
"Some Kind Of Justice").
We
also added two new engineers. Brian Hall who was a very quiet,
intelligent and sensitive guy who was quite technical in his
approach and was a very good engineer and Chris Betro, who was
also a very good engineer but was much younger and more open
to the spontaneity of the moment. Greg Webster, Mal Green and
Dorian also stepped in as engineers from time to time. We recorded
so many demos, singles, EPs and albums for bands over the eight
years. It was almost never empty.
Next
to the bunker like rooms of our studio, there were four other
rooms which people (usually with the help of Jeff Cook) managed
to renovate and turn into studios. At various times these studios
were occupied by Music Key, the music software development team
of Ray Laid and Jeff Cook doing incredibly innovative work for
the time, Gary Pepper's Music Studio, Greg Webster's cave-like
studio where I seem to remember he polystyrened the walls. That
was later taken over by Frank Kerestedjian and expanded and
augmented, (As only the K-Meister can!) There is no stopping
Frank once his mind's made up and he took over the adjacent
garage laying wooden floors and walls and it ended up looking
and sounding "fully professional."
When
an artist called Franco and his mate Craig opened a very cool
cafe on the corner of Bourke and Liverpool St. it proved to
be a Godsend for the studios. Great coffee and food almost any
time you wanted it and you just had to run up the stairs and
you were there. It was also some where for us to take a break
and you'd run into people like journalist/editor/musician Toby
Creswell or the writer Bob Eagle. Perhaps you'd chat to the
inimitable Jeff Duff or musician/actor extraordinaire Simon
Eddy from "The House" on the opposite corner. (The
location for GANGgajang's "House Of Cards " film clip).
There
were a couple of natural disasters along the way. The studio
(or the cold storage room as it used to be) was literally dug
into the hill and unbeknownst to us, next to "the tank
stream". This was an underground stream that ran down to
Circular Quay, and one particularly wet winter in 1986, it burst
it's banks and flooded the studio. No one was in there at the
time and the next morning it was an eerie feeling to open the
door to see so much of our electronics underwater and our horrified
faces reflected in the small lake that was the floor.
At
the other end of the diaster spectrum there was a fire in 1988
that completely gutted the place. It was really terrible. Mercifully
no one was hurt, but it melted everything. It was like a Salvador
Dali painting. Melted everything. Desks, chairs, monitors, everything.
When we were finally able to get it up and running again, we
went all out, with new gear, new couches, new everything, and
it was a great little studio to get very creative in.
From
the famous to the infamous and the not very famous at all, so
many people from that time in Sydney used the studio in one
way or another. GANGgajang,
Sean Kelly, Chris Bailey
(from the Saints), Concrete Blonde, Wendy Matthews, Gyan,
James Baker, Box The Jesuit, Wall Of Voodoo, Some Kind Of Justice,
Gulf Club, Pump and many many more. I suppose it culminated
in Peter Blakely
writing his number one hit single and Aria award winning song
of the year "Crying In The Chapel" down there.
By
mid 1989 we had word that "The Japanese" had bought
the building and demolition of the old Sargents Bakery, in fact
pretty much the whole block, was imminent. We were out of there
by October that year, and it was indeed the end of an era...the
eighties in fact.
A
view of the original Kings Lane Studio can be seen on The Complete
GANGgajang DVD in the "extras" section of "Gimme
Some Loving".
