Of course my answer was yes. I told Adam that I would be with them within the hour as I just had to finish off the LP that I was working on. Adam said that he would lay on some food for me as he knew that I had been working all day. When I got into the control room there were turkey legs, salads, sandwiches and all manner of drinks and food, more like a banquet. 

I told Adam that I would have a little as I worked, otherwise I’d be too full to work. We did get the vocal down and mixed the tracks and copied the LP so that they had a full copy of it to take to Polydor in the morning. I was really happy to hear Adam’s voice on the telephone informing me that he couldn’t thank me enough, and that he had told Polydor to remove John Mills’ name off the album cover and only to have mine as engineer on the cover.

The cutting room got so busy that I used to go upstairs to the Beatles offices and enquire as to their schedules recording wise so that I could keep an eye on the diary to make sure that there was space for them to have their own records cut, as that was the main reason to have their own cutting room anyway. By doing this it ensured that they got their records cut and I didn’t get into trouble over them not being able to get into their own studio.

I remember working in the cutting room when I got a telephone call from John Lennon asking what was I doing later. I said that I should be finished within the hour, and John said would I come over to Abbey Road to give him a hand with something he was working on. My answer was obviously Yes.

Joe Marchini the company driver picked me up from Savile Row and took me to Abbey Road Studios. John was there with Klaus Voormann, Alan White, Yoko, Phil Spector - and Phil McDonald was doing the engineering. John ran over the chords with me, as I was to play acoustic guitar and the song was ‘Instant Karma.’

We did clapping overdubs singing and I played tambourine too. When a couple of hours had gone by John said “That’s great just what I wanted I’m gonna start mixing now. You can head off home now if you want.”

I said “I’d better as I’ve got quite a busy day tomorrow” and John said “And don’t forget that I will be expecting to get some acetates of this tomorrow” which obviously I made sure that he did.

I used to cut the Monty Python LP’s and we would always try to think up mad things to inscribe in the centre of the finished Master disc so that it would be on all the copies. One day George Harrison popped his head in and we chatted about the Python’s. George said that he would love to drop in when they were next in cutting a new record.

So I rang him to let him know. It was really sweet as George was so happy to meet them and they all got on so well. This was the time that they were involved in the making of ‘The Life of Brian’ and after discussions George said that he would finance the film for them as no one else would touch it. Everyone thought that it was blasphemous and wouldn’t get a certificate to be released into the cinemas. I believe George’s input was around three million pounds and I also believe that it grossed about thirty three million pounds. I thought, ‘nice one, George.’

I used to cut a lot of Black Sabbath LP’s too. A gentleman named Wilf used to bring the tapes to me on behalf of Don Arden, who managed the band. We cut quite a few albums. I had met Wilf earlier when he used to manage a band called Stray, a good little rock band. So we got on very well together.

Wilf had a deal with Transatlantic Records who used to put out a lot of folk bands, which was surprising as I didn’t think that they matched the other bands on the label. However, Wilf knew what he was doing as Stray were always in the press and did pretty well being managed by Wilf.

Any way, Ishmail, the accountant at Apple told me that they had not been paid for the Black Sabbath masterings. Apple wanted to be paid what was owed, so I took it on myself to go to Berkley Square where the Jet Records offices were. I was told no-one was in the office who could sign a cheque. I said “Ok I’ll just sit here till someone arrives to sign one” and was told that I was wasting my time, to which I said “I’m waiting and I’m not leaving till I get my companies money.”

They made me wait about two hours then out of the blue Don’s son David came out and said” Sorry to make you wait, here’s the cheque.” At this point I said “I hope it doesn’t bounce as I will be back.” Tough words for a cutting engineer. When I took the cheque to the accounts department at Apple and told them what had happened they said “You were lucky. Don’t you know the Ardens? They are gangsters, they might have had you beaten.” When I heard that I said “Next time get your own money, I cut records and that’s that”.

Part Five: Leaving Apple

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