In the early 1980s, one
London recording studio became the favoured hang out for visiting
Jamaican producers and British reggae musicians alike. Easy Street
Studios in Bethnal Green had humble beginnings, but was soon pouring out
an impressive run of hit tunes by artists like Sugar Minott, Winston
Reedy, Alton Ellis and Barrington Levy.
Phil Pratt: "Well, Easy Street was a bit like a party place them times.
There was a backroom where everybody can go round there and do what them
want do, you understand me, it was nice man. Cos in those days everybody
get tipsy and drink, cos it was like fun those times, and we get
together and come up with some good things. Everybody who come from
Jamaica would work at the studio cos it had the best sound, the bottom
was superb, so 95% of the reggae tune made up here was made at Easy
Street. It was a good sound and me met some good fellow out of it too."
Founded by Eddy 'Eddyman' Williams, the studio soon recruited a team of
local East Enders, like Dean 'Joe 90' Richards, Mike Stephenson, Jeff
Chandler and Stuart Breed, who became known as the Easy Street Crew.
Stuart Breed: "I first met Eddyman when I was 16 in 1977, when he was in
a band (The Foster Brothers) that was signed to Elton John's Rocket
Records, and they had one hit in the UK. Eddy took the money he got from
the record deal and started a rehearsal room. The guy who signed them,
Roger Bain, became head of A&R at Phonogram Records, and he used to send
different bands down to Easy Street to do demos. Roger gave Eddy an
advance to buy some recording equipment, so you had an environment that
was like a rehearsal room plus a recording studio as well. And one of
the bands sent down to record a demo at Easy Street was Black Slate, and
Eddy was nuts about reggae at the time, so the band said we'll bring
some friends down. And then within a matter of months we were doing
almost exclusively reggae acts."
Phil Pratt: "Everybody get along, black and white, and I remember Joe 90
used to joke say him have a black head too, but really him have a
blackhead pimple on his arse! So we all live good together and every man
get along, English and Jamaican."
Stuart Breed: "I was just a kid then, a hippy, 147 pounds with long
blonde hair. In the beginning it was strange having all these guys
coming in from Jamaica, and it could be a bit overbearing for a kid of
my age, but those guys were great and a lot of fun. The spliff smoking
sometimes brought me to a complete standstill, cos really I preferred a
beer, but I would have to say I spent most of my life at Easy Street on
a contact high! I used to work with Errol Dunkley, Alton Ellis and Lloyd
Coxsone a lot. Sugar Minott worked mostly with Eddy."
Phil Pratt had an illustrious career in Jamaica stretching back to the
rocksteady years of the '60s, scoring huge hits such as 'My Heart Is
Gone' and 'Artibella', but by the 80's was increasingly finishing his
productions in London. Easy Street was a low budget studio with
professional but fairly limited equipment - a Soundcraft TS24 mixing
desk, a Roland RE301 Chorus Echo, an AKG BX5 reverb, and an MXR flanger/doubler
- and a speedy way of working which suited the incoming rush of reggae
producers.
Stuart Breed: "We used to work really quickly in those days, because of
budgets. People would walk in, say hello, spark up a spliff and hit the
record button. We had everything always set up, like mics on the drum
kit and guitar amps, so people could just start recording immediately.
Sometimes people would come in and record an album in one session, lay
some tracks, do some vocal overdubs, very minimal stuff, bang out the
mix and done, all in six hours."
Phil Pratt: "I worked with Stuart a lot, and most of the things me do at
Easy Street was with him. He was a great guy, and very helpful and
creative. And Joe 90 also help a lot, ca him play guitar and piano good,
so it was really like a team. I almost felt like one of Stuart's
students engineering-wise, cos while I showed him what I want the sound
to be like, he was teaching me some things around the board. So me just
watch and make him work, cos him very technical with sound and him know
exactly where to put that and put this. He just a great, great engineer
- trust me, I miss him now."
Hearing such praise, it's no surprise that he asked Stuart Breed to mix
'The War Is On Dub Style', an album that typifies Phil's working methods
in those days, with the backing tracks recorded at Joe Gibbs' Studio in
Jamaica, and overdubs and mixing done in London.
Phil Pratt: "'The War Is On' was the dubs to songs by Ronnie Davis, like
'Black Cinderella' and 'Strange Things', which were voiced in Jamaica.
And the parts by Bobby Kalphat were all recorded in Jamaica. Bobby
Kalphat just a great musician, my favourite keyboardist, so when we
finish record the rhythm we go back and record solos and phrases, and
make an instrumental on melodica. to be honest with you he was better
than Augustus Pablo by far, but we have to give Pablo some credit cos he
did start the melodica thing. Next I come to England with the multitrack
tapes, the big 16 into 24 track tapes, and trust me, them tapes was real
heavy to carry back! Then at Easy Street we voiced some Blackstones
tracks and 'Hear We Them A Say' by Owen Grey. At Easy Street we paid by
the hour, but when we mix this dub LP we go over it about three times.
Cos me never like the first sound that we have, it was all right but it
wasn't sellable. So we did go over it again and again till we get what
me want."
Stuart Breed: "We used to get a lot of multitrack tapes coming in from
Jamaica, from Channel One and Tuff Gong studios especially. The Jamaican
engineering was very different from what was popular with chart records
in the UK at the time, but it had its own unique sound which I
appreciated. I wasn't really listening to King Tubby, I was mostly
listening to Roxy Music and Japan and bands like that, so I tried to
emulate that in my mixes, but a lot of the reggae artists would say no,
and stop you from going too far in that direction. So I had to adjust to
give them what they wanted."
Phil Pratt: "Yes, he's telling the truth, Stuart was a rock man not a
reggae man. So yes, I had to teach him the tone of the sound we want and
him make it marvelous. Some people would leave off from the record
sleeve if it mixed in England, but that never occurred to me because I
could get the sound from Jamaica which nobody else could get. And the
secret was all in the voltage: Jamaica was 110 volts and England was 220
volts, so Jamaica lower in the voltage, and people don't know it but the
voltage was part of the sound. So when I was in England me have a step
down transformer that me work with, me have everything and me bring it
to Easy Street and we switch the tape machine to 110 volts and then we
get the sound. People didn't believe it could work cos it sound stupid,
but it work and we get the Jamaican sound. We used to sell ten or twelve
thousand of these dub albums easy."
By the mid-80s Easy Street was scoring further success with homegrown
lover's rock and deejay tunes, and to support their breakthrough acts
the Easy street Crew started to go out on the road and in to concert
venues and dancehalls.
Stuart Breed: "Once we started doing the reggae stuff, Eddy invested in
a decent sized PA system. And we went out doing gigs with the reggae
bands, and also sound system clashes, so we'd be in these dancehalls and
we'd be the Easy Street Sound playing against these other sound systems.
So I learnt about live sound doing those reggae gigs, and then a few
years later I found myself doing sound at the Albert Hall with Art
Garfunkle - which was quite different from playing a dance in Brixton!"
By the late 80s Phil Pratt was starting to ease up a bit on the record
production, concentrating more on running his restaurant business in
London. And Stuart Breed had moved from Easy Street to George Martin's
Air Studios in Oxford Street, where he worked on various dance remixes
before launching successfully into the mainstream, engineering for the
likes of Paul McCartney, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Demis Roussos. Stuart
now lives and works in the United States.
Stuart Breed: "Mixing dub definitely set me up for doing remixes later
on. We did a lot of experimental stuff, and the dub mixes I'd done at
Easy street set me very good stead later when I was doing 12" dance
remixes at Air, cos I wasn't scared to try things. And with all that
toasting stuff, we were really doing rap records before rap was even
around. Easy Street was really a ground-breaking studio, a very prolific
place, and a lot of people cut their teeth down there and went on to do
some great things. For a little studio that started out with nothing, it
managed to get some amazing results."
Diggory Kenrick |