STUDIO SOUND, JANUARY 1999

Pete Waterman Motormouth

WHATEVER YOUR OPINION of him, Pete Waterman prides himself on being an iconoclast. 'Whether you want to pat me on the back or shoot me, I took studios out of the domain of the white-coated bloke,' he roars. 'I took away the idea that studios should be a stand-alone business and said that record producers should own their studios and be responsible for their equipment, and the artist should not be charged with hiring all the equipment.'

As a producer, Waterman certainly changed the face of recording back in the early eighties. His all-inclusive production packages, which to his pride he has kept at the same rate for 15 years, are a lasting legacy to the record companies. And his enormous self-belief is undoubtedly one of the reasons he's managed to bounce back after spending the early nineties in a period of frustration and inertia, culminating in the sale of his PWL label to Warners.

Late 1998 finds Waterman happily ensconced at PWL, the studio complex he built up 15 years ago in The Vineyard, south London, surrounded by his trademark train sets and arms collection. Today, he also has a successful Manchester studio complex in an old church that he bought sight unseen from Tony Wilson; a deal for his Eastern Bloc and Unity labels with Zomba Records; new London studios planned for the new year and his biggest stars since Kylie, Jason et al, Steps - whose debut album has sold a million and counting - together with a roster of new acts including Tina Cousins, guest vocalist on Sash!'s Top.5 hit 'Mysterious Times'.

The Pete Waterman of today is filled with energy and vitality, someone who's learned a lesson or two over the last decade and has brought his business full circle. He's clear about his current role in the hit-making process, which is that of a record producer, not a studio owner or label executive. Today's PWL Empire consists of a tight-knit circle of engineers including his son Paul; a coterie of devoted support staff who've been behind him for 15 years; and his own determination to run a tight ship.

'Not that I'm a control freak, but every time I let something out of my control it falls apart,' he explains. 'You need somebody overseeing things, keeping it focused, particularly now when I'm being offered so much work I can hardly move.'

Waterman surrounds himself with staff whom he believes are genuine innovators. He talks about his engineers and producers with the strategy of a football manager. 'At the top of the premier division in London I've got Karl and Mark (Twigg and Topham who, together with Waterman, form the TTW production team),' he says. 'In Manchester I've got the Work In Progress boys (Waterman himself, his son Paul and Steve Parker) who are at the top of division one. In 1999 I'm going to concentrate on Dan Sanders in Manchester, who's the most undiscovered talent in division two; I'll push him up so that Manchester becomes a good division one team.' Other members of his writing, engineering, production and maintenance staff include Andrew and Dan Frampton, Chris McDonnell and Rene Reichmann.

His own approach to technology is strangely contradictory; while appearing to despise anything of a technical nature, especially the technophiles he dubs 'nanowebbers', he simultaneously prides his organisation on its 'densely, technically packed studios with equipment up to the kazoo', that enable his engineers to create exactly the sound and feel he's after.

'Most engineers find the way I work a total anathema,' he barks. 'They don't understand it because we mix and match technologies and processes. I've no time for purists; they should put their fucking anoraks on and stand on Crewe station. I don't care what an engineer tells me, Iwant a hit and I'll do whatever it takes to get what I want.'

However, the two recent developments at PWL he's most excited about are technological innovations; the AMS Neve Libra digital mixing console installed two years ago at The Church's studio one, The Pulpit, and the ISDN link between the London and Manchester studios.

Regarding the latter, Waterman reckons he spends between 45 minutes and 1¹/² hours daily, listening to what's going on in Manchester from London, where he spends most of the week. 'It's great because it's brought Manchester closer to the fold,' he enthuses. 'I can join in conversations and it means that whatever they're doing I can eavesdrop and give my opinion and hear it at full quality. For me it's a perfect way of working because you can't see anything, you have to use your hearing. I think it's the ultimate thing all mixing engineers should do, they should have the desk taken away from them. They shouldn't be allowed to see a desk. The amount of mixing that people do by watching the PPMs or the vu meters is staggering. I'm guilty of that myself - to see if an adjustment's actually worked you look at the meters, you don't let your ears tell you straight away. For the last three years I've taught myself not to look at meters, but to listen to whether it works. I've learned to trust my ears and ISDN is perfect for that. It also makes the mix engineer in Manchester far more aware that he can no longer just make it sound good in his room, he now has to think about the overall sound and not just the acoustics of one space. It means our engineers have now got used to working in a totally different way.'

While ISDN has obviously rocked Waterman's world, he's even more excited about his Libra, the console he chose after endless evaluations and, in his opinion, the deceptions of rival manufacturers. 'It was a very brave move to install the Libra in Manchester,' he says. 'I looked at every single digital console - and I'm able to buy exactly what I want - and everyone lied to me except for Neve. I told everyone what I wanted and they told me I could have it and it would cost £130,000, but what they don't tell you is it doesn't work without the other £180,000 worth of gear. It's meaningless. Those days of ridiculous investment in studio equipment are gone, and if the manufacturers think that is where their market is they'll all be as dead as Triumph motorbikes. Because what they have not woken up to is the fact the record industry is no longer prepared to pay £1,800 a day recording costs.

'We've proved that by buying the Libra you can do exactly what the big consoles can do. It enables me to turn a profit on making a record; not a big profit, but if I'd invested £450,000 on a console I'd be making a loss. Even at my career level there's only a certain price you can charge for a single. My budgets aren't coming down, but they're not going up either, I still charge what I charged in 1983. How can you tell a client like Steps that the cost of a single is going to be between £25-30,000 per track? Idon't care how good you're telling me a desk is, all I want is to be able to make a record and make a profit.'

One of the main problems with equipping a studio today, according to Waterman, is that console manufacturers are slow to grasp the huge gap between project studios and top end facilities.

'It's interesting, since we've had the Libra we've had upwards of a dozen big producers come and look at it, and they all work the way I work,' he says. 'There is no desk really available for the way we're working. We are all overengineered in the desk department and it keeps coming down to this whole argument about the digital quality. It's all bullshit. I've tried telling them what we want and they're not interested. The first thing they talk about is quality and I'm not interested in quality and neither are 95% of my customers. The kids that buy my records play them off tape recorders. They don't care if it sounds crackly, in fact we put crackles on the records now with Pro Tools. I talked to the guys at Neve about this, but they've got their Capricorn at the top end and they're not going to pitch a desk lower than the Libra. So it's the nearest thing to what Iwould class a sensible price range. It's still too expensive, but there's no £60,000 console that you can plug into Pro Tools and charge £15,000 for your hit singles.

'The problem is whenever you talk to the desk manufacturers they think about a piano player, a drummer, a bass player, two guitarists and a vocalist. They never think about my world where we're running 48 channels of Pro Tools and 18 synthesisers live. We have 96 inputs and that's Chinese to them! I've always admired the way Trevor Horn works with his big live rooms - that's his thing and he's brilliant at it - but I would be brave enough to say that more people world wide record like I do now. So why isn't there a desk which reflects this?'

Despite this beef, Waterman is unstinting in his praise for the Libra, which he describes as being as revolutionary as the SSL was when he discovered it. 'Let's get one thing straight, it's the best desk I've ever worked on,' he asserts. 'The price range kills every other desk. This year we've probably worked on records which have sold a total of 11 million and without the Libra I couldn't have done it, it's changed my life completely. AMS Neve are giving us updates constantly, the desk does more than it did when Ibought it, it's fulfilled its role, and some, and it still gets better and better, it's phenomenal. We've had to add lots of things to it to get it where we wanted because what I wanted was a digital SSL. I'm quite happy with four faders because it makes me listen and not watch, but I know engineers like to see the faders go up and down, so we had 48 faders and they're £1,800 a fader, and we had to have lots more D&endash;A convertors because of the way we work. It's slightly more difficult than using a conventional SSL, but only slightly, so there's no quantum leap of skill between using the SSL and the Neve; although there's a quantum leap when it comes to quality and permutations.'

Such is the extent of Waterman's conversion to the Libra that a year ago he made the decision to carry out all mixing on it. 'This has now given me a problem because if I want to do a quick mix I have to get the tapes to Manchester and the boys have to go up and stay in a hotel,' he says. 'This is unfortunate for me, but fortunate for AMS Neve as it's almost certain the new studio's going to have to have another Libra. I didn't particularly want to do that because I'm trying desperately to bring the studios to a level I believe they should be at by not investing more in hardware but making the hardware better adapted to the marketplace at this moment in time. We've had to spend so much money over the past three years to catch up, go forward and take over again.'

PWL's three London studios are still equipped with SSLs, one of which will be installed in the new facility, but Waterman is keen to move away from them, believing they instil a 'very Stock Aitken Waterman sound' which he wants to escape from. To this end he made a £200,000 investment during 1997 in Pro Tools systems which are now used for recording. But he hasn't forgotten the contribution SSL made to his career since he first came upon the desks in the early eighties.

'Luckily for me I met Pete Wandless who was then working for SSL and suggested I buy one. I had never heard of leasing, I bought everything cash. Pete told me I needed a 48-channel. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about, so I asked Mike Picking, the maintenance engineer at the Marquee where SAW were working, if it was a good desk. He said "Oh yeah, fantastic, it's what Trevor Horn's got". I remember it was about £230,000 so I said "Okay, I'll go and get the money out of the bank", and I've never seen anything like Pete Wandless' face in my life. Then I told him I wanted it in a flight case so I could just take it into the studio and set it up and he sat me down and explained I'd need to have it installed, with a room for the computer, and so on.'

Waterman was persuaded to sort out some leasing and his first SSL was installed into The Vineyard in 1983. Now the lease is up on those premises and a purpose-built facility is being constructed opposite.How does he feel about leaving the old building behind? 'I do have regrets, but I'm never frightened of moving on,' he muses. 'Unlike these studios, which we inherited, the new facility will be completely purpose built, with a writing suite, a Libra studio and an SSL room, plus two cutting rooms.'

So the future is looking bright for Waterman, and it is obvious that he could have continued expounding his opinions for the rest of the day, but he had to leave to make a football match with Zomba director Steve Jenkins, with whom he's had a working relationship for 28 years.

'We're great business partners and great mates; he gives me freedom to worry about making the records while he runs the record company,' he says. 'We have our board of directors meeting in the car on the way to the football and then listen to the product on the way back.'

And with this he's bounding out of his chair, eager to be off, issuing his staff with instructions vis-a-vis the Christmas decorations as he leaves the building.