Alastair mixed most of Angels In Drag. There’s a good story about Al and me.
Just before the final of Rockschool, Spontaneous Dog (my first band) were given the chance, thanks to a couple of the guys’ dads giving us a few hundred quid, to go into the studio. Until then, all that existed were a few dodgy four-track recordings I’d done myself, and the others weren’t too pleased. We were so excited at finally getting the chance to record in a proper studio. Spike, the other guitarist, was given the task of finding and booking a studio. He eventually came up with ‘Active Recording Studio’ in Banbridge, Co. Down.
We pitched up a few weeks later like eager puppies, set our gear up and got ready to launch into the tracks we were going to record. Behind the controls was a young guy by the name of Alastair McMillan, who (as he admitted more than ten years later) hadn’t a clue what he was doing. Which was perfect – neither did we! He gave the impression of managing very well until the keyboard track, probably the best take Rob ever did, was accidentally erased. Not a great moment. The session was a mash of nonsense and sublime moments, like most I have been involved with since.
Anyway, we left the studio with a couple of dubious recordings on cassette, promising to go back and pick up the DATs very soon. Of course we stupidly never did, so the recordings, once the tapes got lost, vanished, never to be seen again. A few friends had the last remaining copies on compilation tapes, on old ferric cassettes that were degrading fast – this is before you could just stick it in your computer and burn it to CD straight off.
Years pass at this point. The Dog split up, I go on to my next band… things spin along beautifully until two years ago, when I happened to be asked to go over to Ireland to do some recording with Ronan Keating. It was happening in this grand old house down in County Wicklow, called Clonmannon. The engineer had been working with some big names, including the Rolling Stones, and I was looking forward to meeting him… again, as it was none other than Alastair. During that session he proved to be a man of extraordinarily mellow temperament and a fine pair of ears, so I decided there and then to ask him to mix Angels In Drag.
Just before I left that session, he said, “Actually, you know what – I have the DAT of your first session upstairs” – I couldn’t believe it! It has not quite disappeared into the annals (probably one too many ‘n’s there) of history, but resides quietly in a box in Al’s studio. I haven’t got it off him yet, but I know where it is, which is something to look forward to.
Mixing with Al was a great pleasure. I would wake in my huge bedroom and stretch out in the enormous bath, reading ‘Lord Of The Rings’ at the time. It was bitterly cold down in Wicklow in February when we did it, but the weather was stunningly blue and clear. The sea was a short walk away, over some abandoned railway tracks – a very remote landscape, down to a grey old strand where the wind blew the spray off the tops of the waves, forming rainbows. Amidst multiple interruptions from Van Morrison, who was coming to meet Al later in the week, we managed to get most of the stuff mixed, exactly as I’d wanted to hear it.
It was a lovely piece of synchronicity that we came together after so much new experience following our first meeting. He was very complimentary about the stuff, which was great to have around me. So many engineers are indifferent verging on dismissive, which drives me insane. Not so Al – he would always find the positivity in the music and focus on that… a great quality in him. We haven’t spoken for a while – last I heard he was up to his neck working for the infamous Mr. Van Morrison, so I shall label him Missing In Action, hero of Angels In Drag.