Recording Engineers Who Shaped The Music: Bill Price

Welcome to Rock and Roll Flashback!  I'm Bill Price, and in the Rock and Roll Flashback series Recording Engineers Who Shaped The Music, I will focus on those individuals who typically remained anonymous, but played an important role in music recording.  In this episode, I will look at the career of recording engineer and producer Bill Price. No, I’m not referring to myself. The other Bill Price was an accomplished British engineer, whose six decade career was instrumental in recording and producing numerous solo artists and Rock bands.

All podcasts on the Rock and Roll Flashback Podcast are produced by brothers-in-law Bill Price and "Jumpin' John" McDermott. The Podcast Theme Song, "You Essay", was written by John. It was initially recorded by Bill and John on April 1, 2004 with several revisions since then.
Multiple promo videos and photos for Rock and Roll Flashback Podcasts are available on the following social media sites:

https://www.youtube.com/@RockandRollFlashback

https://www.facebook.com/rockandrollflashbackpodcast

https://www.instagram.com/jumpinjohnmcdermott/

Bill and John welcome your feedback and comments, and they can be emailed to rockandrollflashback@outlook.com.
Thank you for listening to Rock and Roll Flashback Podcasts!
Until next time...
Rock On!

Transcript

In the Rock and Roll Flashback series Recording Engineers Who Shaped The Music, I will focus on those individuals who typically remained anonymous, but played an important role in music recording.  In this episode, I will look at the career of recording engineer and producer Bill Price. No, I’m not referring to myself. The other Bill Price was an accomplished British engineer, whose six decade career was instrumental in recording and producing numerous solo artists and Rock bands.

Bill Price was born on September 3rd, 1944. He began his career at Plessey Electronics, where gained experience as an engineer working in the UK defense industry. After hearing the twanging sound of guitarist Duane Eddy, he became bored with his job and applied to every London recording studio.   Eventually, he was able to secure an engineering position at Decca’s West Hampstead studios. Interestingly, on New Year’s Day 1962, an unknown band from Liverpool who went by the name of The Beatles went to Decca to record an audition tape. The audition resulted in Decca rejecting the band, famously stating that guitar groups were on the way out. Even though Bill was not in involved in the session, he was familiar with the tape. He later stated that (quote)  “It sat in the tape room for ages and I played it several times, it wasn’t very good” (end quote).

It was at Decca where he gained experience in recording as a staff engineer that enabled him to eventually work with numerous artists that included John Mayall, Eric Clapton, Tom Jones, Engelbert Humprdinck and The Moody Blues. Eventually he became the studio’s resident engineer. During his time at Decca, Bill worked with several bands and eventually earned a reputation as one of the recording industry’s highly acclaimed engineers. Interestingly, one of the final recordings he worked on before leaving Decca in November 1969 was Marmalade’s million selling hit “Reflections of My Life”.  The history of Marmalade is covered in episode 145.

In 1970 he helped build George Martin’s new AIR Studios located in London’s West End and became the chief engineer. It was at AIR studios that he met his future wife Denis, when she applied for the position of receptionist. During his time at AIR Studios, he was instrumental in contributing to a wide variety of recordings of the 1970s and 1980s, which included, Bad Finger, Climax Blues Band, Pink Floyd, Harry Nilsson, Stevie Wonder, Stan Getz, Mary Hopkin, the soundtrack album “Live And Let Die” with Paul McCartney & Wings and numerous other artists. Then in the mid 1970's, he went to Wessex Studios as chief engineer and manager, where he recorded and produced several albums by the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Pretenders. In 1976, he assumed the management of Wessex Studios just as punk rock was becoming popular. 

In an interview with Mix magazine, Bill told an interesting story concerning the Sex Pistols and a primary school, which was located next to the studio.  When the band arrived at the studio in a limousine during the school’s break, the students saw band member Johnny Rotten. Well, they went wild hanging on the wire fence that separated the primary school from the studio. The head mistress came out screaming at the kids to get inside and get away from the dreadful Sex Pistols. Johnny Rotten then launched into a verbal assault on the head mistress, which prompted her to call the police. Before the police arrived Bill ushered the band into Studio Two. Surprisingly, the call to the police had been answered by a member of the Special Patrol Group.  This was a unit that typically patrolled London wearing riot gear. When they showed up at the studio in body armor, Bill took them into studio one and began a lecture on how a recording studio works. Surprisingly, they were quite interested since Bill found out that two of the policemen played guitar and one was a drummer. Then the conversation turned to Fender amplifiers and microphones. Eventually the police sergeant who apparently was not a musician, had heard enough and said let’s get out of here, surprisingly forgetting about the Sex Pistols. 

Now, for the amusing part of the story. When the Sex Pistols arrived at the studio, each one had a bottle of vodka in their pockets. After the police left, Bill went back to studio two where he found all of the Sex Pistols sleeping like babies, with their empty vodka bottles in their hands.

In another story, Bill talked about an event that happened when he recorded two albums with Elton John in Montserrat. After the recordings were finished, Elton arranged a dinner for the entire crew of about 18 at a small local restaurant.  Beside Elton, Bill and the crew, there were about twelve local customers in the restaurant.  In one corner was a young girl playing cocktail piano. Near the end of the meal, she played a version of Elton’s “Our Song”, which touched Elton, prompting him to leave the table and then joined her in conversation. Soon the piano playing resumed, however everyone was surprised to see that Elton was now the pianist. After about a half hour, he was singing “Saturday Night” to the appreciative local customers. 

The list of prominent artists he worked with is numerous and includes Engelbert Humperdinck, David Bowie, Tom Jones, Harry Nilsson, The Climax Blues Band, Paul McCartney, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, Paul McCartney & Wings, Mary Hopkin, Elton John, The Clash, The Sex Pistols, The Pretenders, Badfinger, Guns N’ Roses, Rod Stewart, Blondie, INXS, Mott the Hoople, Eric Clapton, The Moody Blues, Stevie Wonder, and Roxy Music. 

One of his last recording projects involved producing an instrumental version of the Clash’s “London Calling”, which was used during the 2012 London Olympics.  As a break from studio work, Bill enjoyed the outdoor life. In the UK’s West Country where he lived, he ran a horse sanctuary and bred rare pigs. On December 22, 2016, he passed away at the age of 72.

In this episode of Recording Engineers Who Shaped The Music, I reviewed Bill Price’s impressive career as recording engineer and producer. And until next time, I’m your host Bill Price.