guitars were live, and we did a lot of overdubs. I’d say that there were a number of
different setups.
Were you concerned at all with trying to
match sounds as you progressed through
that year of sessions?
There wasn’t a requirement to do that. I
mean, the sounds between the songs were
so diverse and the styles of the songs were
so diverse, there was no real need to have
any continuity.
Did Gilmour play in the control room
or out in the studio?
It was the first time I’d ever done it
where David was in the control room
with his amp in the studio. I’d never
done that before.
His amp head was in the control room
and the speaker was out in the studio?
No, his whole rig was out in the studio.
So you ran a long guitar cable out to
the amp.
Yes, we ran a long guitar cable, which I
later found out was probably not a good
idea [laughs]. You can lose a lot in a long
guitar cable.
But it worked out okay …
Yeah, it seemed all right [laughs]. The first
thing to go would be top end. We would
have been getting a somewhat mellower
sound through a long guitar cable than we
might have with a shorter cable.
The studio at Abbey Road is a big room.
Most of the guitars were in the number 3
studio, which is actually the smallest—but
it is a big room, yeah. A good-sized room.
How much time did you spend finding
the right place for the microphones on
the amps?
Generally, I’d put a mic out and I might
move it once, but not beyond that. I would
usually get it to a place where I felt it
worked—in theory—and then if it didn’t
work, I’d move it. But I saw no reason to
move it if it was working.
Were you following your “ 18 inches away
with a 4x12 cabinet” philosophy back then?
Yeah, I would guess so.
Some sources say Gilmour tracked some
of that album with a Fender Twin. Was
that mic’d the same way?
I have no memory of that. All I remember
is a 4x12 Hiwatt cabinet and whatever
speakers were in there. Oh yeah, and a
Leslie. On “Breathe,” for example.
How did you mic that?
Most likely it was fairly distant. Probably
one mic on the top, one mic on the bottom.
Because we were on 16-track, as opposed
to 24-track, I was probably not recording
the Leslie in stereo—because of not having
enough tracks. It would have all been recorded mono anyway, so it was getting a good
spectral response out of the Leslie, rather
than any kind of stereo out of it.
Are the sounds that you were capturing
pretty much what we hear on the final
mix, or was there a lot of processing done
at mixdown?
Yes, David tracked with his effects. He had
a pretty advanced pedalboard for the period. I mean, I don’t know if it was actually
a “pedalboard,” but he had pedals. He had
phasing pedals and wah-wah pedals and all
