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A friend took me round to meet a producer,
who was a friend of his. We went into his studio,
which was quite impressive, and he said, simply,
‘What do you want?’ I said, “Well, we’re covering
these Led Zeppelin tracks, doing the drums;
they’re sounding a bit crap, and I’m trying to
make them sound more like the original.’ And he
said, ‘Well, what Zeppelin tracks are you doing?’
I said, ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You.’ And he said, ‘Well,
I’ll tell you how the drums were done, because I
did that!’ And I immediately knew who he was:
Glyn Johns!”
The seasoned musician, recording engineer,
and record producer, famed for working with the
likes of Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones,
The Eagles, Eric Clapton, and Led Zeppelin must
have been impressed by the cocky teen standing
there before him, subsequently taking him under
his wing to teach him the recording ropes in a way
that no music technology course ever could.
Matthews’ stock rapidly rose as a direct result,
as he readily admits: “...I become desirable merely
by association, working at least half a month,
initially, then solidly on projects that I was being
employed on.”
Next stop, London: “I took a job at Nomis
Studios... it was an important insight into people’s
personalities, and how to get on with people…
“During that whole period I was still racing
around everywhere, finding out what I liked and
didn’t like – and saving as well. I bought a house
down in Sussex. It took me three years to pay off
the mortgage – which is a major reason as to why
I’m here now.”
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MONKEY PUZZLE HOUSE TO THE MANOR BARN
Home Is Where The Art Is
Matthews then decided to go it alone and cast
his potential property net far and wide – from
northern France right up to Scotland – before
finally settling in Suffolk: “My patience had started
to run out, then I saw this place; it had a load of
barns at the back, which, I thought, had a good
shape to them, so I got pretty much all the local
architects to come round and have a look. I chose
the one I thought was most exciting – before I
even bought the place, but they all said the same
thing: knock down the original barns, because the
building cost to renovate what was there would
be very similar to what it would be to knock it
down and start again.
“So I bought this place right at the end of 2000,
then had a hell of a struggle getting planning
permission, because it’s a very small community
here; when it went to committee, the main
objection was that there was no bus stop nearby,
so how on earth would people get to and from
the studio? Obviously there was a severe lack
of understanding about what the studio would
actually be!”
Objections duly dealt with, a planned oneyear
build stretched out over seven long years.
“The building got bigger, the budget went out of
the window," says Matthews. "And my nice little
nest egg turned into a remortgaging nightmare
as I had a lot of bad luck with the builders.”
For all the pain though, it's a lovely place –
from an aesthetic, ergonomic, and, of course,
sonic standpoint: “As far as the design goes,
I had my favourite places – Glyn’s own studio I
really had an affection for, and Ridge Farm, but
one name that was prominent through all of that
was Keith Slaughter, who designed Abbey Road,
the original Olympic, Air, Ridge Farm, and more.
He’s retired, but I went to see him, presented
him with some drawings; he said they were okay,
though his main contribution was saying that the
height of the control room was too high – in his
opinion, even though I’d taken Ridge Farm and
Glyn’s studio and kind of meshed them together.
But Keith came up with the suspended curved
ceiling idea, which we followed through.”
Not that Matthews wasn’t working during this
unintentionally drawn-out, costly construction
process, mind you: “I had a big console – a
Soundcraft 3200 – here in my living room, which
was acting as a control room, while I recorded
drums that I could hear through the floor. ...I still
had people coming and spending serious money,
but one of the projects I did was more of a pop
album, which didn’t even get released after a top
ten and two top 20 hit singles. This highlighted
to me the changing face of the music industry
during the crap years between when I started
building this studio until it was finished.”
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