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EDEN Studios is inconspicuously tucked away in a quiet corner of Chiswick, its peaceful courtyard access belying the fact that daily, famous names such as Shakin' Stevens, Nick Lowe, The Jets, Dave Edmunds, and Phil Everly, to name but a few, may be doing a session there. It is one of the top independent studios in the country, and is fully equipped with the most up-to-date equipment. The studio, measuring some 32 x 23 ft, is at ground level and situated at the back of a spacious courtyard with ample parking room. Reception and the lounge area are adjacent to the studio /control room in this part of the building; offices, tape copying suite and workshop are to be found tucked away in other parts of the extensive premises.
In the studio attention is drawn immediately to the unusual and very modern -looking acoustic ceiling, made up of geometric panels cleverly concealing the air conditioning
outlets. Each section of the angled walls carries a large flat box from floor to ceiling, each containing three frequencies of bass absorption. The discreet brown and cream colour scheme gives the studio a warm and comfortable feeling; although it is now into its seventh year it still feels fresh and modern. Polished parquet flooring at one end provides a live area on an otherwise carpeted floor.
Eye contact is maintained between sound engineer and artists via windows from the control room on to both studio and a floating isolation booth, with the SSL angled at 90° to
the studio to reduce the 'goldfish' effect. Instruments include a Yamaha grand and a Fender Rhodes. Mics are by Neumann, AKG, STC, Electro-Voice, Beyer, Calrec, Shure and Crown (PZM). Equipment in the control room besides the SSL desk with Total Recall includes Studer A800 MkII and Ampex MM -1200 24 -track (with 24 -24 copying, 46- track, and 16 -track heads available); 2 -track Studer A -80, Dolby M24 and 361s for noise reduction and JBL 4350 monitors with Crown and Quad amps. A large selection of outboard equipment is provided, including Lexicon and EMT digital reverb and stereo plate; AMS digital reverb with delay line and flangers; Eventide Harmonizers and flangers; ADR Panscan; etc. ..the list goes on. The tape copying suite, upstairs at the other end of the courtyard, includes A80 and B67 2 -track machines, Dolby 361s, cassette machines, Klark Teknik graphics and Tannoy Super Red monitors. Shag pile carpeting covers one wall for sound treatment.
The lounge area which has been doubled in size this year contains television and video (120 cassettes), and a video games machine. Kitchen facilities and a shower are also
available. The surrounding area is well supplied with restaurants, pubs and fast-food shops (and even a genuine 'greasy spoon'!). The huge games room has darts and snooker.
There is a sun -trapping patio to relax on when any sun appears.
Eden's three directors, Piers Ford - Crush, Mike Gardner and Philip Love have achieved success by sticking together through thick and thin for the last 15 years. They faced
many problems over the years including compulsory council purchase of their first studio when they had just about got it together, and subsequent difficulties in finding
and financing new premises. Piers takes up the history of the studio.
"We actually started off in Mike's bedroom in Wimbledon, before we got our premises in Kingston," he recalls, "and then just together to write and record songs in our spare
time. At the time Mike and I were working at the BBC, Mike then introduced me to Philip who had also written some songs, one of which had been recorded by Gerry and the
Pacemakers on an album. That was pretty exciting in 1965. As Mike had some recording equipment we decided to get together and write and record some demos. We converted Mike's bedroom into a studio, people heard about it, and started coming there to record their demos. At the time there were only a few studios like RG Jones, Tony Pike, Studio Republic, and a few other independent studios. Demos in those days had to be transferred from tape to direct cut acetate disc -it was long before cassettes. We got quite a good reaction to our demos -people were impressed with the quality, and thought they were done in `real' studios. We were using Reslo ribbon mics and a mixer which Mike had made. Groups kept coming along there to record and we began to think we had something to offer.
"The crunch came when Mike's parents very inconsiderately decided to move to Reigate! We thought if we could get premises and convert them into a studio we could hopefully pay the rent by doing demos and in the meantime would carry on writing songs and doing our own thing. We spent the best part of a year looking for premises which ended when we found a place in Kingston which had actually been a Congregational Church meeting hall. It was just a room in the middle of a very odd -shaped building which had a supermarket downstairs, a flat around one side and backed on to the Congregational Church. It was about 20 x 16 ft with skylights and really lent itself well to conversion. It had another couple of rooms as well, and the rent was nominal.
"Whilst sorting out the base for the studios here, we made our first capital purchase -a Presto disc cutter with the original 78 RPM turntable! We had to borrow the money
from our parents to buy it -it cost about £275. This was a good price, which we only achieved because Phil and Mike, while having a private discussion in the studio in Bracknell
about the cost of it, realised that the owner had switched on an intercom and was evesdropping -an early example of bugging! They pretended to bemoan the high price saying how
much we wanted it but it was just too dear and we'd have to give it a miss. Suddenly the owner came back in and knocked a huge chunk off! It looked like a heap of old junk but had all the right bits."
Piers, Mike and Phil did the conversion from church hall to studio themselves, with the aid of a lot of friends. Rockwool, chicken wire and fibre board made up the acoustics;
because of the wool dust they had to work with polythene bags over their heads. Equipment at the time consisted of two Revoxes (one with selsync), some mics and stands, Grampian spring echo, and the pièce de résistance, Mike's home-made fully transistorised mixer, 30- channel (16 out /24 monitoring) with rotary knobs. "The disc cutter was soon going and we got a contract with a publisher to produce acetates for his overseas companies, a good bread and butter line," recalls Piers.
It soon became clear that they were actually in business, and their clients expected a service. "Things escalated very quickly," says Piers, "and the continual effort to improve
the studio took up more time than songwriting. To finance it we borrowed a few hundred pounds from parents, who also acted as guarantors, and spent most of the money on the second Revox. Philip had done some accountancy training so had a good idea about figures and book-keeping and went to see his own bank manager in Wimbledon, with reasonable cashflow figures. I think he was impressed that we were being realistic and that we weren't thinking in terms of making a fortune overnight but talking about a small business dealing in small sums of money that would pay its way -he gave us an overdraft of £400."
The studio gradually built up steady business. Mike, Phil and Piers were there on their days and nights off from their main jobs. Many clients from those days subsequently had big hits including Peter Skellern and John Kongos. From demos it was only a short step to making masters, and one of their first was with a band called Conclusion Is. It was arranged by Harry Stoneham and got quite a few plays in its first week of release and then disappeared! "This small success kept us going, We never drew any money out and had amassed a bit of capital by the time we left Kingston.
"We finally ended up with a 4 -track Ampex and were charging £7.50 an hour in 1972, which in those days was good value."
On the move
Kingston Council had been wanting to develop the corner of Eden and Union Street, where the studio was situated, and were threatening compulsory purchase. Ultimately, not
being able to find suitable alternative premises in the time allocated, the compulsory purchase came to a compensation claim. It was fortunate that Philip had produced some tracks which they decided to take a chance on by going to Midem; the chance proved a lucky break for them, because a small American record company was really impressed, and paid a substantial advance for an album to be produced. The contract signed with him was duly presented to Kingston Council; it was pointed out that they couldn't fulfil the contract without a studio. Kingston Council accepted this, and after long negotiations Eden got substantial compensation agreed. After that they had to decide whether to pack up altogether and get on with their own careers or do the thing properly.
"By this time a 16 -track studio was the norm," recalls Piers. "I actually went to Companies House and went through studios' accounts to see if any of them were making any
money. The figures seemed impressive. Studios like Air, Apple, Advision and Olympic were around by then, but there still weren't a lot- probably less than half the number there are now. There were very few independents, run as we were, by a small team. In the end we decided to carry on. We looked over the whole of West London; we wanted to be closer to the West End than Kingston. Some of the places we rejected have since become studios, and one hears of problems they are having that we foresaw, trouble with neighbours, structure - borne noise, and so on."
Mike found their present premises. They consisted of a yard and a big building at the back of the yard which had once been a laundry, but was then being used for making
big fuel tanks. "It was in a terrible mess; the roof was in a state, drains were blocked up and the yard was occupied by an enormous oil tank. It really had zero going for it, but the area for the studio was big without pillars or RSJ's holding the roof up. Mike convinced us that if we used our imagination we could begin to see possibilities. We did. The
premium for the lease exactly used up all our savings from the previous six years. We put this down at a stage when we had no idea how much conversion was all going to cost. All we knew was that we had the premises and a bit of experience of running the business.
Remaining text and scanner-error corrections to come...
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