Famed English producer and engineer John Leckie started his career as a tape operator at Abbey Road Studios, working on albums by George Harrison and John Lennon before graduating to engineering, recording albums by Pink Floyd and Paul McCartney & Wings. He later added the title of producer to his name and went to work with artists such as Simple Minds, the Stone Roses and Radiohead to name but a few. One of his most influential works, though, is the mini‑album 25 O’Clock, a pastiche of ’60s psychedelia recorded by XTC under the pseudonym the Dukes Of Stratosphear. It gave John an opportunity to try out recording tricks he’d learned during the original psychedelic era.
Underground Music
“This song was written first thing in the morning by Andy Partridge. We had come into the studio and found him already working on this little melody and by lunchtime, we’d more or less got it down with drums, bass and everything else. It was really spontaneous, even though it was quite a complex song. And a lot of the middle section and the reprise at the end, which is where this backwards reverb sound I like is, was all done in just one take.
John Leckie: Of course, today you could do it on a computer really easily, because all you do is reverse your signal. But back then, working with tape, it was extremely complicated to do.
“Of course, today you could do it on a computer really easily, because all you do is reverse your signal. But back then, working with tape, it was extremely complicated to do. I had to take the multitrack so that I could phase the drums, and to be able to put backwards reverb on them. The drum tracks were recorded on tracks one to eight on the multitrack. But when you turn the tape over, they’re going to come up in reverse, as tracks 17 to 24. So, in reverse, track one was track 24, and track two was track 23 and so on.
“Then I had to reset the monitor [mix] and work out a track to record it all on. I did this by making sure that my blank track was indeed blank, keeping in mind that it was to be in reverse. So, I checked my track sheet, on which I had noted that tracks nine and 10 were both blank, which meant that in reverse they were now track 16 and track 15.
“Once I played the drum track backwards, I then sent it to the reverb and then pressed record. And what happened then was that when I turned the tape back the right way round, the reverb would occur before it. So, if I had a drum hit, it was going backwards with the reverb on. And when I turned it the right way round, the reverb was coming before the drum hit.
“I did a lot of it by trial and error and from experience, because the length of it depended on the music. Also, the length of the backwards whoosh, which when it came in, had to be in time, too. Otherwise, if it was too short, it would not be effective enough. It was a fantastic little effect, especially when used on the drum fills. It just sounded spectacular and scary because it was coming from nowhere, and because it was reversed, it’s kind of a crescendo. And once I had it on tape, I then phased it so it was even more washy‑sounding. I learned the technique from having worked with Pink Floyd on their album Meddle [1971]. And that’s kind of what I copied for when I did ‘The Mole From The Ministry’.”