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Going to Montserrat was like going into a dream.
It's always different.
Reality's always different from what you think it will be.
I love the idea of wilderness on the edge of civilization.
I think the volcano itself is a kind of presiding spirit over the island,
and it definitely gives you a sense
that you're living on the edge of something seismic.
When the volcano went off, that was a pinnacle point of change.
A point where nothing was ever gonna be quite the same again.
In the way we recorded, in the way that music was dealt with.
Those magical moments are gonna be no longer.
It was a glorious dream that George Martin had.
And it's so sad, as always,
to see a glorious dream come to an end and be destroyed.
It's Atlantis now, isn't it?
(♪ "HOT HOT HOT" BY ARROW)
♫ Ole, ole, ole, ole
3 Feeling hot, hot, hot
VYE ROBINSON: Montserrat's in the Caribbean. It's very close to Antigua.
But because it's so small, it really is that hidden gem.
They used to call it the Hidden Gem and the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean.
Montserrat was colonized by the Irish. That's why the island is so different
because it's just a really friendly place, it's just got a magic about it.
4 Keep your spirit, come on, let's do it!
3 Feeling hot, hot, hot
DESMOND RILEY: We had one big superstar.
Mighty Arrow. Everybody around the world would know Arrow, Hot Hot Hot.
That's our music. We call it soca music.
JUSTIN "HERO" CASSELL: Soca is a hybrid of calypso music.
Calypso music originated in Nigeria and came to the West Indies.
These islands, you know, they were part of the slave trade.
And then you had the calypso carnivals.
I Keep people rockin'
MINETTA ALLEN FRANCIS: Montserrat is just a lovely place.
There is an atmosphere in Montserrat
that just makes you want to live in Montserrat.
MIDGE URE: There was no doubt there was a magic on Montserrat.
This island was kind of untouched.
There were no big corporate signs for chain restaurants.
And here was no American money in there,
just these old shacks and tin roofs,
and brightly colored and painted beautifully.
And you felt as though you were in a time warp.
This little island had a heart that you could feel, you know?
KNOPFLER: It didn't have the sophistication you'd feel straight away
if you went to Antigua or anywhere else like that.
It was far more innocent, far more quiet.
STING: There's definitely a mystique about the island.
It's quite a place, actually. It's really dramatic.
These, you know, very sheer cliffs.
And, of course, the fertility of the island
is a function of this volcanic ash that comes down periodically.
It hadn't come down for a long time,
but the island was blooming and blossoming, everything grew.
I often wonder why George Martin chose a volcanic island
to put his beautiful studio on.
(BIG BEN CHIMES)
Originally, Dad, he was a mad visionary in lots of ways.
I think always liked the idea of pushing boundaries.
Think about what he did with the Beatles in the '60s.
He pushed the boundaries with the recording studios.
He wanted to do something different.
I bust a string straight away.
(RUNS FINGERS UP KEYBOARD)
There were some great moments singing, Paul, but it wasn't the one.
It's the second one out of every three is the one.
Do you want to hear any of it before you do any more or go straight for another?
JOHN LENNON: They either say that George Martin did everything
or the Beatles did everything. It was neither one, you know?
He had a very great musical knowledge and background.
So he could translate for us and suggest a lot of things.
We'd be saying we want it to go...
000-000 and eee-eee.
He'd say, "Well, look, chaps, I thought of this this afternoon.
Last night, I was talking to..." whoever he was talking to.
"And I came up with this."
And we'd say, "Great. Great. We'll put it on here."
It's hard to say who did what, you know?
I mean, he taught us a lot. I'm sure we taught him a lot.
GERRY BECKLEY: A record producer is not like a film producer.
A record producer is much more like a film director.
One thing that was unique to George that a lot of producers didn't have
is that he was also the arranger.
That's very often a completely different person, different element.
In George's case, his work as an arranger
would be, for example, the strings in Eleanor Rigby or something.
If you think of some of the famous producers of our time,
the wall of sound, Phil Spector,
where he controlled every note of every instrument
and was just a tyrant and stuff, George was not at all like that.
But there was a serious element
of just kind of good Pythonesque British crazy in there.
Just a lovely combination.
(& "THREE AMERICAN SKETCHES: II. OLD BOSTON" BY GEORGE MARTIN)
He knew how to get from you the best that you could give.
Which was extraordinary, in the most wonderful way.
Elegant, gentlemanly, loving, nurturing way.
He would make any musician a much better musician
by spending five minutes with them.
You can put a very soft flute against a huge brass chord
and still make it sound loud.
And then cut up the tape, threw it up in the air,
until it settled down on the ground, and joined them up again together.
So it just became like a patchwork quilt.
This is the kind of thing you can do on a recording,
which you obviously couldn't possibly do it live
because it is making up music as you go along.
He's largely responsible, along with the Beatles,
for giving everybody that came after them in music a career.
What the Beatles did with their albums, no one will ever top that.
NEWSREEL: It is a moment in history that may one day be known
as the day the British Empire was no more.
The Beatles have decided to call it a day.
BECKLEY: Well, a lot of things happened at that time.
Obviously, the Beatles broke up, and so, George was free from EMI.
So I guess he became his own boss.
But frankly, if you're known as the Beatles' producer,
anything you do after that,
it's virtually impossible to get anywhere near that.
GILES MARTIN: I think my dad was tired of the confines
of a very rigid company structure,
which was Abbey Road, or EMI Studios as it was at the time.
And he wanted to build a place which was more artist friendly.
Abbey Road obviously created great music,
but they always found...
I mean, the fridge was locked every night.
They had to break in to get milk for their cups of tea.
Even the loo roll had Abbey Road on it, so you wouldn't steal it.
It was very much a... It was like a proper English factory.
MALCOLM ATKIN: There's no doubt in my mind that George had a vision
of how recording could or should be done.
Through the '70s was a period of great excess in the music business.
Um, it was an era when there wasn't such a thing as a budget.
There was a need to make some music.
COOPER: The '70s was one of the most exciting periods
in musical recording time.
And a few times, I've been in EMI, Abbey Road,
and normally I would bump into George, but he wasn't there.
And I wondered what was going on, and they said,
"He's making his own studio now. AIR London it's gonna be called.”
' Will you meet me in the middle?
I Will you meet me in the air?
DAVE HARRIES: We had four studios.
Oxford Circus, right in the middle of town.
And it was so successful, you know, it was a hit factory.
(♫ "SISTER GOLDEN HAIR" BY AMERICA)
There's a momentum shift which happens with successful studios.
But I think my dad wanted to do something different
in the recording space.
He wanted to record in a different location.
Then he built AIR and he thought, "Where next?"
George was looking for something, you know,
which wasn't in the middle of London.
Somewhere where the people could come and record,
and his plan was there'd be a lack of hangers-on.
It would just be them and their families.
HARRIES: Then he had an idea that he would put a studio on a boat.
He had a boat in line, which we went and looked at,
a great big, big boat, and we were going to put a studio in the middle
so we could go to anywhere in the world and record people.
Then he realized that just the diesel generators would make a noise
in every single recording he made.
So then he looked at islands, looked at Island Paradise,
looked at that idea about building a studio and found Montserrat.
HARRIES: And suddenly, he comes up to me and says,
"Dave, we're flying out to Montserrat. I want to show you something.
I've just bought a house and I've bought an estate,
and I want you to build a studio there."
I'd read about Montserrat in a Canadian magazine.
They described it, "The Emerald Isle of the Caribbean."
So, I went there for a few days and fell in love with the place,
and with the people, because they're such gentle people.
And I loved it so much, I bought a place, simple as that.
KNOPFLER: Montserrat, for George, was something more
than just a commercial operation.
He'd fallen in love with Montserrat.
And he had something else in his mind,
just to be able to tie in creativity with being in a special place.
COOPER: George's idea was to take people out of an environment,
to put them into harmony with nature,
but also have time together to talk, to have dialogue.
And what he knew would happen
was that for a lot of bands who had never been in that situation,
that would evoke new ways of thinking, and therefore, new musical ideas.
If you look at Montserrat on a map or had visited it
at that stage in 1976, '77,
you'd never think, "Let's build a recording studios here."
In the same way you start building the studios, you don't think,
"Let's get Rupert Neve to build a custom desk and put it in this space.”
HARRIES: The heart of any studio is the mixing console.
Geoff Emerick was quite involved in what was gonna go on in Montserrat.
So Geoff didn't want to use a current type of Neve console.
So Rupert redesigned the desk.
He said, "It will wipe everything else off the planet, this desk."
AIR Studios, part of AIR's fame
was that it had these three incredible-sounding Neve consoles.
And they had one at AIR Montserrat.
Neve desks, to me, it sounded musical.
You could actually tune into something,
you could bring out the character of something.
(UPBEAT MUSIC)
GILES MARTIN: Putting a recording desk in a studios
in a big city has its own problems.
Putting a recording studio on Montserrat,
which really had no transport links at all at that stage,
was the ultimate challenge.
And it was very brave of them, too, because if something went really wrong,
your closest port of call was Miami.
You can imagine this huge two-ton box,
with the most extraordinary piece of equipment inside of it,
with about 30 builders all round it,
and they rolled it off the back of the truck onto the oil drums.
(UPBEAT MUSIC)
PRESENTER: He's recognized as the greatest record producer
the industry has seen. George Martin.
(APPLAUSE)
What are you up to right now? You have an interest in a studio abroad.
Recently, I built a studio out in the Caribbean.
This reminds me of it, by the way. (LAUGHS)
So I spend quite a lot of time out there.
And that was Montserrat in the West Indies.
I hope I get a lot of people there.
(5 "VOLCANO" BY JIMMY BUFFET)
BUFFET: We were, I believe, the second band that recorded there,
and, you know, I love island culture and I love the island people,
and I lived on my boat off and on down there for 20 years.
So I didn't have to go back to London or New York or Nashville to record it.
And I was able to take those songs that were written there
and go into that studio that was built by George Martin.
You couldn't get anybody who had a better reputation at that time.
It was a lovely working environment
because you didn't leave, I would say, the arena of creativity.
You were constantly involved in the creation of this music,
as opposed to, like, being in Nashville,
because to me, there are two ways that you go into the studio.
You can go in and look for perfection, or you can try to capture the magic.
I've always been a "capture the magic" guy.
4 Now, I don't know
♫ I don't know
♫ I don't know where I'm a-gonna go
3 When the volcano blows
3 One more now
♫ I don't know
♫ He don't know
♫ I don't know
♫ He don't know
♫ I don't know where I'm a-gonna go
3 When the volcano blows
♫ Mr. Utley
But then, we had a few problems. (LAUGHS)
At the time, they were not funny
because there was a bit of a colonial aspect to things
that did not fare well with the American band.
We were in having drinks, meeting everybody.
As we went to order the drinks,
you had to do it one at a time and have a slip down,
you had to put it in and pay for it at the time.
And this did not go over well with the Coral Reefer Band.
So the studio manager at the time, a guy named Denny Bridges, I remember,
I said, "This is kinda odd for us, sir. Can't we kind of speed this up?
We can have fun here,
but we're here for two hours trying to pay for the drinks."
He said, "That's just the way we do it here."
And I just said, "Why don't I just buy the whole fucking bar?" (LAUGHS)
♪ Ground, she's a-moving under me
I Tidal waves out on the sea
The thing was when we first got there,
we didn't know what we were gonna call the record.
And we saw the volcano.
This was a dormant volcano that was, like, a tourist attraction.
You could walk from, like, here to you and that was the vent of the volcano.
It was... (WHOOSHING SOUND)
It was kind of fun to go up there, and I was intrigued by that volcano
that was, you know, sitting there that was so accessible.
The volcano.
I don't think anybody gave the volcano more than a sort of sideways glance
when we went down there.
There was this thing called a soufriére, which was a bubbling sulfur springs,
but it was seen as one of the local tourist attractions.
It wasn't seen as anything dangerous.
I was always like, "Are you sure you wanna be on this island with this?"
Because the volcano was always sort of not going off,
but it was always, like, a possibility. It was never, like, completely quiet.
You'd sit on the veranda and just listen.
And... I remember thinking a few times,
"Well, what if that volcano suddenly went off?"
I'm from Chicago, we don't do volcanoes.
(I "BOOGIE WONDERLAND" BY EARTH, WIND & FIRE")
I Dance
♫ Boogie wonderland
3 Ha, ha!
I Dance
♫ Boogie wonderland
VERDINE WHITE: When we went to Montserrat,
we had been coming off all those hit records,
those big hits, and we wanted to pull away from that
and be grounded, cos we were musicians first.
So we wanted to go back to our roots and just play some music.
For us, the biggest thing was the whole experience of just going there.
And I had heard the ladies that were working in the field with the machetes,
when they were bringing our equipment from the airport to the studio,
you know, the big cases with Earth, Wind & Fire on them,
they had their machetes and they dropped them and applauded.
Cos they knew we were coming. They just applauded the cases.
We hadn't even gotten there yet. And it was beautiful.
& Why do you hang your head
♫ And never, never satisfy the loneliness you tread
♫ Spending your life in the falling rain...
If anything, I think because of where it was,
it touched our spirit in a different kind of way.
You didn't feel anything other than just joy in the music.
There was no rush either, there was no clock.
And by being away from everything and everybody
and from, "We need another hit record, we need another hit record."
And we just put that aside, and said, "We're gonna do a double record."
You know... And we're just gonna play some music.
And we actually mapped out the whole record there.
Top to bottom, just in conversation.
It was the early '80s. Record company budgets were reasonable,
and afforded artists to go and take over a studio for a while,
a residential studio.
So when you went to Montserrat, it was yours.
It was your environment.
Your bar, your kitchen, your whole place.
So it was something that was really quite special.
There weren't many residential studios of that quality.
It was like it was all one big band. It was like everybody was in the band.
George the cook was in the band, the housekeeper was in the band.
It just all kind of overlapped, it was not separate.
It was like one big beautiful thing.
FRANCIS: Earth, Wind & Fire were very lovely.
They came right here in this house.
I invite them to come for dinner. Some of them came.
And when they came, I had a daughter, a pretty daughter.
One of them wanted the daughter,
but he didn't get that chance. (LAUGHS)
STEVE JACKSON: The staff all had their own quirks.
Blues, one of the drivers,
whenever he wanted to say something, he'd go, "Let me talk."
Earth, Wind & Fire have a track on that album called Let Me Talk.
For a band to come in and write a song about a driver,
must've had an influence.
I think in order to build a studio that people love,
it's all based around the staff.
Montserrat was a bit like Fawlty Towers.
It had these crazy characters running around.
Because it was a single studio space, with no other bands there,
the characters that worked in the studios themselves
became part of people's lives.
Tappy Morgan, or George Morgan, was the chef.
He was great. He was very emotional.
We all remember George, the chef, I think.
He was quite an imposing gentleman.
GEORGE "TAPPY" MORGAN: That was the best job
I ever had in my entire life.
Every band... gave me a big tip.
And you know the reason why?
Because I made them good food. And everybody was happy.
Phil Collins, Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Paul McCartney.
All the guys liked the island. They called it Strangers' Paradise.
(I " HAPPINESS” BY BASS OVER BABYLON)
Do you want something else to drink?
We would all be in the office, and we had this telex machine.
Remember we didn't have email or any of this stuff in those days.
We would be there, and suddenly you would hear tap, tap, tap...
And we would walk out there and have a look.
"Paul McCartney, 2nd February to 28th February."
And that would be it.
(HUMS MELODY)
Something like that.
♫ I've been wandering without you by my side
♫ Without you by my side
I know what it is. You need to go to the G.
(SINGS)
MCCARTNEY: After the Beatles, none of us wanted to work with George.
It wasn't that we didn't want to be produced by him.
We all would have loved the discipline and the expertise that George has,
but it was that he'd been associated with the Beatles.
GEORGE MARTIN: We were very apprehensive about it to begin with,
both of us I think,
because although we've been very good friends over the years,
not having actually had to have the hassles of working,
we were all a little bit not sure about it.
GILES MARTIN: At that stage, Paul was working with my father near London
on two albums, Tug of War and Pipes of Peace,
and my father persuaded Paul to go to Montserrat.
ATKIN: Because I was the chief engineer, I got the call from George, like,
"You built this place."
If Paul McCartney's coming in and it's a success,
it's like getting the housekeeping seal of approval.
So, it better work.
REPORTER: It's now 14 hours since John Lennon was shot here,
at the entrance to the Dakota Building on West 72nd Street
in the center of New York. In those 14 hours,
there has been a crowd here standing in more or less silent vigils.
The flowers have been piling up at the gate.
GEORGE MARTIN: I feel frightfully sorry for Yoko and Sean,
and all the people who loved him so much.
I also feel very angry, that it's such a senseless thing to happen,
that one of the great people that have happened this century
can be just wiped out by madness. I'm very angry about it.
ATKIN: Paul came down to the island,
sadly only a few weeks after Lennon died.
And it was touch and go before Christmas
as to whether this actually was going to happen.
They were very, very nervous.
An entire security firm from New York City flew down
ahead of the band arriving.
And they would go everywhere, just to protect the band.
And they didn't even have a good time, because they were just being a nuisance.
You don't need that security in Montserrat.
ROSE WILLOCK: You need to understand, that in Montserrat,
if you're a cricketer or an athlete,
people will be asking for your autograph.
If you're a musician, they hear you on the radio all the time, no big deal.
So they sent their security guards packing.
They would chill out in Kinsale, in Salem, at the local bars.
Just chill out like how we are right now,
and drink and get drunk and carry on and all of that, no big deal.
I Well, I used to fly when I was a kid
♫ And I didn't cry if it hurt a bit
♪ On a carpet ride to a foreign land
♪ At the time of Davy Crockett
4 But it wasn't always such a pretty sight
♫ Cos we used to fight like cats and dogs
4 Till we made it up in the ballroom
♪ Ballroom dancing made a man of me
♫ One, two, three, four
JACKSON: Paul turned up with a whole entourage of stars.
Through Carl Perkins and Stanley Clarke on bass
and Stevie Wonder, of course.
MCCARTNEY: I had this song called Ebony and Ivory ,
which is about harmony between races.
Because it was Ebony and Ivory
I thought, "I'll be the ivory, so I need an ebony."”
So, I thought my best choice would be Stevie Wonder, if I could get him.
So, I telephoned Stevie and said, "Do you like the idea of doing this?"
And he said, "Yeah." So he came down to Montserrat.
(I "EBONY AND IVORY" BY PAUL MCCARTNEY AND STEVIE WONDER)
& Ebony and ivory
♫ Live together in perfect harmony
♪ Side by side on my piano keyboard
♫ Oh Lord, why don't we?
JACKSON: I think they liked the whole experience.
When the recording was going well and everything was happening,
they'd take some time off, and they wanted to go and play.
So they'd go down to the local bar and they would jam.
There was one night, Stevie said to me,
"I wanna go and play somewhere. Can you fix it up?" I said, "Sure."
I phoned up the Agouti and I said, "Is your piano plugged in on the stage?"
And they said, "Yeah, but we're just about to close."
And I said, "No, don't do that. Don't you close tonight."
And Stevie went down there and played.
He played there till four in the morning.
WONDER:{ I've enjoyed my stay here in Montserrat
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
3 You know, this is my first time coming out
So, at the end of the night...
At that time, we were playing for ten percent of the bar.
Whatever the bar take was, we would get ten percent.
That night, we got a lot of money
because Stevie Wonder left US$5,000 in the bar for the band.
So among the five of us, we got about US$1,000 each.
That was our biggest payday. (LAUGHS)
For us, in Montserrat,
it was just amazing. There's not a word to describe that.
And in some place else, you couldn't pay for it.
♫ And you know my friend, Paul McCartney
♪ One of the nicest people I've ever met
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
I And the members of this band
4 And all the people at the studio and staff
3 I never will forget
I want everybody to say this. Say it. Wait.
3 Montserrat
Say it.
- AUDIENCE: ♫ Montserrat - WONDER: It Montserrat
Say it.
- AUDIENCE: & Montserrat - WONDER AND AUDIENCE: & Montserrat
WONDER: Say it.
ATKIN: When Stevie Wonder arrived,
he and Paul were having such a good time in the studio,
the sessions were overrunning
and Paul, I think he had Air Force Two booked
to go back from Antigua back to London.
I can remember sitting next to the telex machine
and this huge great telex comes rattling through saying,
"If you don't get here in the next two hours,
we have to change the crews out again
and it will cost you another $10,000," or whatever it was.
And I just kind of turned to John at the time and just said,
"That's about what we're charging him a week, isn't it?" (LAUGHS)
JACKSON: When the band finished, we took them all to the airport,
we loaded them on their planes, waved our bye-byes, and they all left.
We would all drive up to St George's Hill
and we would all sit up there, maybe having a beer,
really not saying much, just clearing our heads.
And then, OK, back to the studio.
And that was it. Relaxation over and we'd get back.
But that was special, we'd just gotten through a gig,
and everything was done, everything was fine.
Now we were going back to get ready for the next one.
1981, we didn't have a day off. We worked back to back.
(5 "ROXANNE" BY THE POLICE)
ANDY SUMMERS: We were coming out of the punk scene in London,
which went from about 1977 to about 1980.
Then it sort of petered out.
But it was a wonderful, colorful moment in music history.
It was the crucible for The Police, that's where we started.
3 Roxanne
4 You don't have to put on the red light
STING: The Police made three albums
in dingy, sunless recording studios in England and in Holland,
where we would work from ten in the evening till dawn.
And we lived that kind of existence for a couple of years.
Welcome to MTV Music Television,
the world's first 24-hour stereo video music channel.
STING: I think the success of The Police really was a happy accident,
because it was the beginning of the MTV era,
and we had a whole slew of videos we'd already made
and there was this channel, custom-built to receive these videos.
And we became a staple on MTV, which, of course, added to our success.
- STING: It's nice to be here in Athens. - (CHEERING)
What do you call the place? Athena or something?
STEWART COPELAND: By the third album, we'd had a couple of hits
and the record company are saying,
"This is now going to be the big one, if you get this next album right."
And the record company were there with us to ensure
that we did not stray from the path of commercial success.
So, for the next album we went 12 hours' flight away from the record company,
down in the Caribbean, at Montserrat Studios.
3 As I walk into a room
♫ I'm a three-line whip
♪ I'm the sort of thing they ban
♪ I'm a walking disaster
♫ I'm a demolition man
STING: And it just looked like we would have died and gone to heaven.
Because there was a tropical sea and beautiful skies,
and jungle and a swimming pool right outside of the studio.
And you could actually see the daylight through the studio.
This was sort of the rock-star dream.
A fantastic state-of-the-art studio in the Caribbean.
I mean, this was it, this was like the Beatles or something.
We sort of reached the pinnacle with going to those studios.
STING: George would come in occasionally,
but he wasn't our producer.
Our producer was a man called Hugh Padgham.
George was more of a presiding genius around.
He was rarely in the studio with us.
The team were wonderful. They looked after us.
I would run up the hill every morning from the villa and jump in the pool,
and then write lyrics or write a tune, and then make the album.
I developed a relationship with the island
and the people who live there.
I learned to windsurf on Montserrat. I was taught by a guy called Danny.
He was very patient with me because I was a very slow learner.
He's a very brilliant man, very good friend of mine.
Respects me much.
He said, "Danny, you taught me something that I'd never known how to do.
The people teach me or taught me things,
they are my hero, and you are one of my hero."
Right, the dance steps.
(SNAPS FINGERS)
4 Whoa-oh-oh-oh, whoa-oh
OLIVER: We did some backing vocals for The Police.
RILEY: It was quite funny, actually.
Twice, I went into the studio to do backing vocals.
They're the same.
- Everybody come and sing. - Everybody come and sing.
- They wanted, like, a choir. - Sound like a choir.
(BACKING TRACK PLAYS)
- Hang on, stop. - (MUSIC STOPS)
OK, I understand.
COPELAND: By this time in our career, our main songwriter had a technique,
which is to not reveal his songs until we needed them.
And this song came in and we heard the demo,
and we all could hear right away
that the demo Sting made by himself, it's already a hit.
Just put that sucker out right away.
But that didn't suit our self-image as a band.
(SONG CONTINUES)
And we tried every way. The punk version, the reggae version.
And so, eventually, one morning I arrived in the studio, "Fuck it!
Just fucking play your fucked-up demo,
just fucking... just tell me where the fucking changes are!"
I knew where the changes were, because we'd tried it every which way.
It's a complicated song with a lot of different parts.
And so, "OK, roll tape and I'll play with the demo."
And we did, and the record that is the record
is that morning recording of that song in one take.
4 Every little thing she does is magic
♪ Everything she do just turns me on
♪ Even though my life before was tragic
♫ Now I know my love for her goes on
4 Every little thing she does is magic
♪ Everything she do just turns me on
♪ Even though my life before was tragic
♫ Now I know my love for her goes on
Then we recorded in the studio.
I think Andy was dancing on George's prized mixing desk,
which didn't go down well with Mr. Martin.
But he didn't harm it. He was very light.
We just had fun, it was a fun video.
♫ Magic
♫ Magic, magic, magic
♫ Whoa-oh
3 Yo-oh
♪ Fe-oh-oh-oh, oh
SUMMERS: Being on an island like that, you can be in the bungalow
in a dry, dusty patch of sand down near the beach,
and you'll be on your own, there is no one else.
So it was kind of isolating, and it brought out some really good things.
Ghost in the Machine was another major hit album,
but my wife called me and said, "I want to get divorced," that's it.
In fact, I think was all three of us probably got divorced
or started divorce proceedings during Ghost in the Machine.
STING: It was a period of stratospheric success.
The part of that, the speed and the size of that success,
also distorts your perception of it.
And we were so filled with this forward momentum,
we didn't really get a chance to appreciate it,
except for Montserrat, which allowed us to calm down.
(SERENE MUSIC)
COOPER: Music is the liquid architecture of our emotions,
and George was a wonderful architect.
He had a way of putting things in place, in the right place.
In a place that was comfortable and a place that grew, it was fruitful.
(BIRDS CALL)
() "BENNIE AND THE JETS" BY ELTON JOHN)
(CHEERING)
♪ Hey, kids, shake it loose together
4 The spotlight's hitting something...
The first main wave of success for Elton and the band
was really from, like, 1971, '72 till '76.
Just a four-piece with Elton, me, Dee and Nigel.
We'd made all those classic records in the '70s,
and then there was a gap where we weren't all together.
We all did different things. Elton retired.
And he called me in '81 and said, "I'm gonna put the band back together."
I don't know.
CHRIS THOMAS: I was recording with Elton, in Paris,
and we weren't getting much done.
Um... that's the diplomatic answer. (LAUGHS)
I spoke to Elton's manager.
He went to see Elton, and all of a sudden...
This was, I think, on a Tuesday and we were flying back to London.
And I was told that we were actually going to Montserrat on Friday.
We arrived there, and it was just such a shock to suddenly be there.
It was like, "Oi! What are we doing here?" (LAUGHS)
We had a couple of days to get over the jetlag, and then we were off.
NIGEL OLSSON: Montserrat was a whole different deal.
The room was fantastic. It just had a great atmosphere.
It had George all over it, the studio. It was just so cool.
I hadn't got any material before I arrived in Montserrat,
and I wrote 12 songs there.
It's always the danger that you might not be able to write.
So I quite like that.
For the first half an hour when I was trying to write,
I couldn't write anything and I was panicking.
But the way we write, it's very strange. With Bernie and I, it's something...
It just works, there's a magic there.
Until Too Low for Zero, with Elton and Bernie,
it had been all over the place.
They hadn't been together much, hadn't been writing together.
And this was the first album back. It was all Bernie.
And all the original band.
So it was quite a remarkable event.
OLSSON: We were all on the same wavelength.
We didn't have to tell each other how it should be.
And the beauty also was that we heard the songs being written.
So we were in there from the start.
(I "I GUESS THAT'S WHY THEY CALL IT THE BLUES"” BY ELTON JOHN)
JOHNSTONE: I remember the day
that we wrote I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues,
because to me, it's one of the greatest love songs of all time.
And we wrote it in 20 minutes. Again, it wasn't like a big thing.
It was like, "OK, this, this, this. Yeah, that sounds great.”
And, "Let's get the guys in, let's record it."
3 And I guess that's why they call it the blues
♪ Time on my hands
♪ Could be time spent with you
♪ Laughing like children
♫ Living like lovers
4 Rolling like thunder
I Under the covers
3 And I guess that's why they call it the blues
THOMAS: There was something about being on the same site.
It has this strange effect of bringing everybody together.
(UPBEAT MUSIC)
One day, Elton said, "Where'd did you go last night?"
I said, "We went to this new place. We found this new place."
He said, "Where is it?" I said, "I'll show you."
So, we were driving along
and we go past this totally rundown place
with a bit of corrugated iron over the top.
And Elton goes, "I love places like that.
Nobody ever invites me to places like that."
I'm going, "Yeah, sure!"
It's, you know, the bloke who lives in the Ritz all the time.
So, we went there.
All right now, this is where we do portionable dining.
MORGAN: The Village Place was just like ordinary place,
like in the ghetto,
where everybody hangs around and they serve chicken wings
and you go into the bar and have some bush rum.
RILEY: But I liked Elton John very much,
because he makes the whole place lively, very lively.
Yeah, whenever he come here, man, he just come out,
- and start dancing. - He's a good guy.
Just dancing in the yard.
RILEY: He was a good guy.
OLIVER: He would take off his shades and give it to whoever wanted it.
Whenever he goes to the Village Place, the bar is open until he leave.
Open bar. Anybody who come here, you get free drinks.
He runs an open tab. That's him. He's very generous.
Guys that are down, he brings them up, you know?
(UPBEAT MUSIC)
MICHAEL PAUL STAVROU: After dinner,
we would all congregate back into the control room with pifia coladas
and sit back and listen to the album.
And then, Elton would play it again. And then, a third time.
About a week into the album,
everybody went to bed after playing the album through only once,
which upset Elton.
He started ranting about something about throwing...
"It was a shit album. I'm gonna throw the tapes in the pool."
And Mike, very, very swiftly, brilliant idea,
gave him about six blank two-inch tapes.
Elton went out and threw the whole lot in the swimming pool.
That could've been the album.
(& "I'M STILL STANDING" BY ELTON JOHN)
When we were working on Too Low for Zero,
Dee had been suffering from cancer.
So he wasn't in the studio all the time.
Then we got a phone call one morning saying,
"Nigel can't come in. He's not very well.”
So Elton went, "What the fuck?"
He said, "They're all dropping like flies!" (LAUGHS)
And over there in the distance, there's a kind of shelf by the window
separating the control room and the studio,
and there's this huge cloud of marijuana smoke.
And lying there, absolutely prone,
was Adrian who was in charge of all the logistics for the recordings.
Out of this smoke this voice said, "Well, I'm still standing."
Elton and I just looked at each other, we just collapsed with laughter.
Then, the next minute, Elton picked himself up,
phoned up Bernie and said, "I want you to write this song."
♪ I'm still standing
♫ Better than I ever did
♪ Looking like a true survivor
♫ Feeling like a little kid
♪ I'm still standing after all this time
♪' Picking up the pieces of my life without you on my mind
3 I'm still standing...
JOHNSTONE: George Martin came down
when we were there doing Too Low for Zero.
And later on, Chris told me that George had said to him
that he couldn't believe the chemistry
that was happening between the four of us in the studio. And...
The only thing that he could liken it to was when he worked with the Beatles.
When we heard that, it was like, "Shit, OK, I like that."
I've got the same people around me now as I did 15 years ago.
We've been through ups and downs.
And the pleasure of it all is being able to share it with these people,
and after all that time, still be with them,
and I think we're playing better.
And it feels fantastic
to be able to get a second chance at having that enthusiasm.
And so, that more than anything else, it means a lot to me.
♫ It's a little bit funny
♪ This feeling inside...
(LAUGHTER)
3 I'm not one of those
(LAUGHTER CONTINUES)
I Who can easily hide...
ROBINSON: We did all have good, fun times. He did three albums with us.
One time, he said that he was leaving at 21st December.
We were all getting excited because Montserrat's carnival is at Christmas.
So, we're all thinking, "Soon as the band have gone, we'll all be partying."
And he's like, "I think I'll stay." So he stayed.
We had a fantastic time.
It was like a big family, sitting at the table, enjoying Christmas.
So, maybe with Elton, the excesses were very, very big,
but it didn't make him happy.
It might not have been anything to do with Montserrat,
but he did have an experience that quite changed him, obviously.
(SINGING AND SAXOPHONE SOLO)
OLSSON: It was a place that was put there
for people to understand themselves, to inspire the world.
Because there was a lot of stuff came out of Montserrat that is forever.
- One, two. - One, two.
COOPER: In London, I was often overdubbing in the studios
on work that had come from Montserrat.
I would say sometimes, "This is from Montserrat."
They'd say, "How did you know?"
I'd say, "I can hear it, believe it or not."
There's something in the air that's surrounding these notes.
There's a sympathy between the notes, an understanding.
That can only come when you're working with George
or in one of his environments.
(I "RIO" BY DURAN DURAN)
3 Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand
3 Just like that river
4 Twisting through a dusty land
IAN LITTLE: The '80s was probably
one of the most inventive decades for pop music.
You'd had the punk movement in '76, '77, then you had new wave,
bridged the gap from the '70s into the '80s.
And then you had this thing called the New Romantics,
which was Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Culture Club.
And Duran were the biggest of the bunch.
(FANS SHRIEK)
RHODES: We'd just finished the Rio album,
and we were chasing The Police,
because they were a little bit older than us.
They were ahead of us in America, and it was time to make another album.
And then we thought, "We can't go back to England.”
Because it was just a little too crazy with all the hysteria at that point.
We couldn't really move in the street.
So we wanted to get as far away as we could.
AIR Studios Montserrat looked very appealing from the brochures.
And, of course, having George Martin involved,
we figured that everything's gonna be perfect there.
(♫ "THE REFLEX" BY DURAN DURAN)
RHODES: When we arrived, it was like being in a surrealist painting.
You go, and there's black sand everywhere, and the volcano,
and these giant iguanas.
One thing that was a bit of a shock
was that we were used to living our lives
completely under media scrutiny.
And it was days when you'd wake up
and there'd be someone hiding in your hedge in your front garden.
You'd have to draw the curtains quickly when you're having breakfast.
So, suddenly there, there was no one.
It was like suddenly going under water and there was silence.
(INSECTS CHIRRUP)
(♫ "THE REFLEX" BY DURAN DURAN)
LITTLE: In Montserrat, we had fun.
We're not that straight-laced. We're making rock 'n' roll.
When we first arrived,
and when we made it known to the staff at the studio
that we wanted some grass,
within, I don't know, 15 minutes, some kid arrived with a plant
that he just uprooted and stuck in a carrier bag.
RHODES: For Simon, he loves sunshine and he loves being outdoors
and he loves boats and water.
So it was a dream to be able to be at a studio in the Caribbean,
do a few hours' work, then go off and have fun in the sea.
For me, really hot climates and isolation,
personally are not so great for creativity
when you wanna do something with a little experimentation.
And so I really had a bit of personality clash with it creatively.
And I ended up working into the night mostly in the studio,
because there was no disruptions, people weren't running out of the door
to jump in the swimming pool every five minutes.
And I could actually focus on things.
But, having said that, when we were there,
we got the basis for the Seven and the Ragged Tiger album,
The Reflex and The Union of the Snake.
♫ The reflex is a lonely child
& Who's waiting by the park
♪ The reflex is in charge of finding
3 Treasure in the dark
4 And watching over lucky clover...
Being in Montserrat, you certainly felt isolated from the real world.
It did end up feeling like we were disconnected from the fans
because we were just living in paradise,
and that's why we decided we need to finish the album in a city.
RHODES: We went to Montserrat with all good intentions,
and to George Martin's great credit,
he pulled off something that was pretty extraordinary.
But I'm not sure that we were in the right headspace
to make the kind of record there
that might have been a little more chilled.
We wanted to make something full of energy.
Duran Duran came, and they were young.
As they were there, I think two of them celebrated their 21st birthday.
And they were at the height of their fame.
So, of course, they were probably wanting to be in the jet-set place.
So, it wasn't exactly right for them.
We had some other bands like Ultravox. They were young at the time.
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, they came.
But it was right for them
because they were ready to enjoy what Montserrat offered.
LOU REED: We went to Montserrat once and recorded.
That wasn't a good experience for me.
Palm trees and the ocean and the sand's too relaxing.
I need to hear traffic.
JOHNSTONE: They sold Valium over the counter, which was fucking insane
because you'd walk into the store and go,
"I'll have a bottle of shampoo, packet of razorblades,
50 Valium and a Mars bar."
We got on this little plane, propeller plane.
And the pilot's got a joint in his hand.
I'm going, "This doesn't look too safe.”
I've seen bands that came down and...
changed, like, their work pattern.
They say it themselves. "Wow! We did such and such in two days.
It's unbelievable. We've never done that before. That was a six-week job."
HARRIES: The place was like that. It made you intense.
It sort of intensified everything that you were.
But it also got a reputation for a place where you could get things done.
One of the things that happened with a lot a very famous people
was they lost sight of how they became famous.
Coming to an island like this,
you were shoved straight back into each other's faces
and you had to go and make another album.
But at the moment, I want to have a fight.
Much better television than your questions,
- I promise you. - OK.
- Shall we film me whopping Sting? - Yes. That would be great.
SUMMERS: The Police, album one, album two,
it was us against the world.
By the time we got up to Synchronicity , we were world-famous,
everything had changed, and it was, "Why should we be a band anymore?"
(TUNES GUITAR)
Shall we tune the guitar for you, man?
SUMMERS: So when we got back to Montserrat,
we were so isolated from each other,
that it got really difficult to...
you know, imagine being in the studio and making a record.
It was sort of icy.
COPELAND: We went there for the isolation,
but we soon found that without anything else around us,
we had only each other to drive each other bananas.
And we all saw the irony of it,
although we were screaming and shouting at each other,
that here we were in this paradise, which we soon turned into a living hell.
MAN: Yeah!
(GUITAR PLAYING)
SUMMERS: I was the only one, personally, the guitar player
in the studio itself, this recording room.
Then there was the control room, where the Neve desk was.
Sting was in there playing his bass, and Stewart was up in the dining room.
We were playing together, but weren't seeing each other.
We were all completely isolated and playing through headphones,
which was sort of bizarre.
What they all wanted in those days,
this is a different period of recording techniques,
was perfect separation.
And that's what we had,
and that's what we were gonna be as people too, perfect separation.
COPELAND: I did not like recording in the dining room,
because it was lonely and grumpy.
And it wasn't the feeling of what I liked about the band,
which was the interaction.
That's what we did live and what's so exciting.
But it was quite miserable. I couldn't wait to get off that island
and put it behind me, and have it done.
STING: Well, the conflict in the band is kind of storied
and it may well be exaggerated.
But for me, it was a function of the creative process.
You have three alpha males trying to forge something
that points in one direction and not three.
We weren't physically aggressive with each other,
but it got pretty heated in there
but really because we cared passionately about what each of us were doing.
And, um... But it was not easy.
It was great to have an environment around us where you could escape to.
I could go walking in the hills.
In fact, I went up to the volcano a couple of times.
You'd come back smelling of sulfur. People would think you'd been to hell.
WOMAN: So, back to the top?
- (MUSIC PLAYING) - (TAPE STOPS)
It's OK. All right, yeah, it sounds OK. It's C, F and A now, yeah.
SUMMERS: We got to a point fairly early on
where we almost couldn't speak to each other.
It was tense, the atmosphere was tense, like we shouldn't be doing this anymore.
We need a producer.
I said, "What about George Martin? He produced the Beatles. Surely?"
And we were up there, so he'll probably take the job.
Sting and Stewart said, "Well, you go and get him then."
So I said, "Right, I will."
We sat down and he said, "Would you like a cup of tea?"
I said I'd have a cup of tea. So we're having a cup of tea.
I start to tell him about the problems with the band.
And I said, "We'd like you to come over and produce us."
He said, "Um... not sure.”
Maybe he wasn't in the producing mood at that point.
He said, "I think you can sort it out. You're grown-ups.
Come on, I think you can do it. There's a lot at stake here."
So, we had a very nice time having tea and chatting.
I walked all the way back across the valley in the beating heat,
and we were all incredibly polite to one another
and very nice for the rest of the album.
That cured it.
(♫ "EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE" BY THE POLICE)
4 Every breath you take
4 Every move you make
♪ Every bond you break
4 Every step you take
♫ I'll be watching you...
COPELAND: Every Breath You Take was very different
from most of our other recordings,
because it was pieced together bit by bit.
It was another song that we knew was a huge hit.
Do not mess with it, do not get in the way of a big hit.
So every element was recorded completely separately.
And the result is actually kinda cool.
It's very composed, all the parts are very composed.
And at the same time, emotionally very powerful.
♪ Since you've gone I've been lost without a trace
♪ I dream at night I can only see your face
♪ I look around but it's you I can't replace
♫ I feel so cold and I long for your embrace
♪ I keep cryin', "Baby, baby, please”
You know, maybe the best music comes out of this sort of tension.
I've always believed that.
I think that The Police had three distinct personalities
which were not the ideal bedmates, because we weren't mellow guys.
But I think that firecracker complex is what sort of fuels the music.
In hindsight, it was worth it, and we could all see...
When we had calmed down, left the island and we went back to the real world,
all those battles that we'd fought
and arguments about what we were gonna do and how we were gonna do it,
they were worth it, because it really did light the thing up.
And we all can say that if I'd had my way every day,
it wouldn't have been a great album that it was.
If we had let Sting get away with every commandment,
and if Andy had put in every guitar solo, uh...
it wouldn't have been the same thing.
We kind of needed each other to restrain and incite each other.
♫ I'll be watching you
4 Every move you make
4 Every vow you break
♪ Every smile you fake
♫ I'll be watching you
♪ Every single day
♪ Every word you say...
STING: Synchronicity was our biggest success.
It had songs like Every Breath You Take,
and King of Pain and Wrapped Around Your Finger.
But I did decide during that recording that I didn't want to do this again.
That we had achieved everything we set out to do as a band,
and achieved it tenfold, a hundredfold more than our expectations,
and so, after that, I figured it would just be diminishing returns.
So I wanted to use the momentum we'd gained to set out on my own.
After we finished the Police album, Sting stays there for a bit of a holiday
and the next band in is Dire Straits, and the rest is history.
I I want my MTV
I want my MTV!
KNOPFLER: I've seen on MTV The Police doing an ad for it.
And I thought, "If I stick that to Don't Stand So Close to Me,
those notes, that would fit."
Anyway, we were recording Money for Nothing ,
and I said to somebody, "I wish Sting was here."
And somebody said, "Well, he is here, he's on holiday."
(& "MONEY FOR NOTHING" BY DIRE STRAITS)
Ow!
♫ Listen here, now
3 That ain't workin'
4 That's the way you do it
3 You play the guitar on your MTV...
Trudie said to me, "That's gonna be such a huge hit."
I said, "I dunno, it's OK."
Of course, it was the biggest hit of that year, so I was very...
very proud to have been on that, but it's purely a function
of just being in the right place at the right time.
♫ We are the sultans
♪ Yeah, we are the sultans of swing
♪ That's right...
KNOPFLER: There'd been something going on with the other albums.
There'd been a sort of a build-up, because we were playing live
and there was a big demand to see the band live.
Because the feeling was that not only could we do it all live,
but it was better than playing the records.
That was reaching a sort of critical mass.
(GUITAR SOLO)
NEIL DORSFMAN: Mark wanted to try something different
in the approach to recording Brothers in Arms.
After we did Love Over Gold, we were both displeased
with how analogue tape would change the sound of our recordings
while we were doing it.
Dire Straits' manager was conscious of that
and encouraged Mark to record the album digitally and mix it digitally.
So, it was an all-digital recording ultimately winding up on CD.
And it was one of the first records to be done that way,
and I think he wanted the time and the peace and quiet of Montserrat
to do it there.
() "SO FAR AWAY" BY DIRE STRAITS)
KNOPFLER: If you come into a studio from Oxford Circus,
you'll be slightly hyper.
You've come out of the Tube, or wherever you've come from,
and you're in a different mental place.
When you come from the track up to the studio in Montserrat,
you go in the kitchen, you see George
and you get a cup of coffee and you're wandering around.
And it's just more of a home studio vibe.
But there's no getting away from the fact that that kind of life,
a rum-punch evening and a later start kind of a thing,
it will start to worm its way into your work methods.
GUY FLETCHER: It would be a lie to say we came away from there
without being touched deeply by the place.
The sound of the island does come across on the record.
3 You're so far away from me
3 You're so far, I just can't see
3 You're so far away from me
DORSFMAN: I mean, it was almost too chill in a way.
I remember, we were doing some track a couple of weeks into the record,
and I was looking out and everybody was in a towel
with sun cream on the nose, sunglasses.
They were playing, like, 40 beats per minute.
I was like, "We're making a record here! What is this?"
It was too mellow.
At any time in the studio, it's very easy to lose perspective,
especially when you're locked up and it becomes your whole world.
In fact, George Martin, down in Montserrat said to me,
"You know, Neil, a producer can either drive the bus
or he can sit next to the driver with the roadmap, you know?"
And it was up to me to sort of keep that energy higher,
because the record, I think, was suffering.
KNOPFLER: Neil would be one of the most important people in my history.
You know, it's due to him that we got back on track.
We were there a long time before trying to get it going, but...
Once we hit a groove we recorded the album very quickly, really fast.
All the Brothers in Arms album was done in a few days.
() "WALK OF LIFE" BY DIRE STRAITS)
FLETCHER: In a lot of our spare time, we used to go down to the beach,
and we soon noticed there were a couple of windsurf boards,
and that Danny was offering to teach windsurfing.
I becomes friends with the Dire Straits band.
That's after I had taught Alan Clark and Guy Fletcher to windsurf.
So one day after I and Alan Clark went windsurfing and come out, Alan said,
"I'm taking you up to the AIR Studios for lunch."
I said, "OK," and I went up
and they're there, and they're mixing the music they did.
I started dancing to the music, and then he said to me,
"You know I wrote a song on you dancing?" I said,
"Mark, that's going to be a damn big recording hit for you.
I'm predicting to you,
that is going to be your biggest album that you ever make."
Now, it's one of the biggest album in the world.
Everybody loves the song Walk of Life.
4 He do the song about the sweelt-lovin' woman
♪ He do the song about the knife
♫ He do the walk
3 Do the walk of life
I Yeah, he do the walk of life...
DORSFMAN: Brothers in Arms was one of the first all-digital recordings,
and that in tandem with MTV blowing up at the same time,
I think that's a huge reason
why everything changed for the band at that point.
OK, best British LP.
Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits.
(CHEERING)
KNOPFLER: I didn't have a clue about how successful the album was.
I don't think we did. Never thought about it.
When Philips invented the CD and then brought it out,
that just coincided with the release of Brothers.
So they took that and used it as, "This is what CD sounds like."
And then, they used all their sales outlets to play the record.
So that was an additional thing that just happened by a fluke, really.
DORSFMAN: In the '80s, somebody smart figured out
that you can make a boatload of money in the record business.
And with the cheapness of CDs,
to make a CD, to fully manufacture, everything was less than a dollar.
So, there was a calculation there,
and like everything in the modern world, it quickly became monetized.
MAN: There was a lot of excitement associated with the coming of the CD.
The consumer loved it.
As a result, the record industry exploded at that point.
(I "BUSTIN' AT THE SEAMS" BY ROBIN LOXLEY AND WOLFGANG BLACK)
GLOVER: It was a real shot in the arm, coming to Montserrat.
It was a real special event for us.
It still is, it's in our memories, it's still our favorite album.
ROBINSON: For us, the Rolling Stones coming to the studio was a big thing.
Because obviously, George is more associated with the Beatles,
and we'd had Keith Richards in doing the X-Pensive Winos and it was fabulous.
OLIVER: I was talking to Keith Richards before,
when he came to do his solo.
He did a solo record.
I was talking to him
and I told him, "The Rolling Stones is one of my favorite bands."”
I asked him if they were coming back together.
And he said to me, "I am the only man who could put the band back together,
and I'm going to put it back together and we'll come here and record.”
- And they did come to Montserrat. - Yeah, man.
Keith has always insisted that Mick is the lead singer,
as he is in the Rolling Stones, and he shouldn't do anything else.
They just weren't getting on.
(CHEERING)
REPORTER: We might as well start by posing the question
of whether the release of a Mick Jagger solo album
means the end of the Rolling Stones?
I'd done stuff with other people and the odd thing here and there.
I'd obviously played with other bands and jammed around,
but I thought it was a good moment
to break the pattern of just doing a Stones album
and just do something of my own for a change and step out a bit.
If Mick's albums had have been blockbusters, so to speak,
whatever that means, uh...
it would be very unlikely that I would be leaving tomorrow,
to start making a new Stones album.
(♫ "BLINDED BY THE SUN" BY NICK NOLAN)
KIMSEY: Going down to Montserrat,
I was quite fearful of going down with the Stones,
because working on four or five albums with them previously,
I knew that they were very much city bound.
(STEEL DRUM MUSIC)
I think they were quite amazed how normal everybody was, really.
It's like when a band like the Stones suddenly appears on the island,
the expectation can be something so big, it can freak you out.
MORGAN: Keith Richards, all the guys,
they drink a lot, they smoke a lot, they eat a lot.
As I say, they were a whole set of good guys.
(DRUM ROLL)
(LAUGHTER)
(GUITAR PLAYING)
Don't go mad on the drums though, OK?
KIMSEY: Looking at the body language
between, especially Mick and Keith in Montserrat,
it was very different to what I'd seen,
and this was one of the most friendly and warming atmospheres
I've seen between Mick and Keith.
3 Our heartbeats
RICHARDS: We both agreed the best thing for the both of us
is to get together. Like, nobody else.
And it's very strange that it's easy between the two of us.
It's when other people are around that it can be a problem.
I think after the second day, we had three or four songs already.
When you start off on a roll like that, it helps, you know?
KIMSEY: Peter Mensch and Cliff Burnstein came down,
and we were listening back to Mixed Emotions.
Peter Mensch was talking to Keith
suggesting that an arrangement change should be made.
At which point, Keith delved into his doctor's bag,
one of these beautiful old leather doctor's bags,
and bought out a knife and pinned it between his legs,
and said to Peter something in the terms of,
"Listen, sonny, nobody tells the Rolling Stones how to write a song.”
Which I thought was classic, wonderful. And the arrangement never changed.
If I get up there, we need another chord in there.
- I think we have to take another minor. - Yeah, one more minor, F, F and G.
♫ With mixed emotions
♪ And you're not the only one
I like it.
KIMSEY: Montserrat was a huge part of rebooting the Stones,
helping them get back together, particularly Mick and Keith.
It was pretty sad when we all left
because they hadn't been that close for such a long time.
There was a sense of, um, you know,
when you finish school for the first time and you all break up.
It was a bit like that, breaking up for the summer holidays.
They weren't going to see each other for a long time.
RICHARDS: One, two, three.
(♫ "MIXED EMOTIONS" BY THE ROLLING STONES)
♪ Button your lip, baby
4 Button your coat
♫ Let's go out dancing
♫ Let's rock and roll
♫ You're not the only one
& With mixed emotions...
(CHEERING)
JAGGER: Good morning, everybody.
We're very pleased to announce that we are doing a big tour this year.
And we've got a new album which comes out and that's called Steel Wheels.
The first single's called Mixed Emotions.
I know you're dying to ask questions,
like, "Will this be the last tour you ever do?"
KIMSEY: Well, the Stones were the last band to record in Montserrat.
There's been a few studios that they've been the last people to record in,
but they're not the reason that they've closed down.
It's always an act of God.
The thing about the Stones is that they do this thing
where, in the old days, they used to trash things.
They said, "This is what we usually do. On the last day, we trash the place."
In a way, Hurricane Hugo did it for them
because as soon as they'd gone, the hurricane hit.
GEORGE MARTIN: Hurricane Hugo wiped us out, it wiped the island out almost.
There are only 12,000 people living on the island,
and 11,000 of them lost their homes. It was pretty devastating.
But they picked themselves up
and it took a year, or a bit more than a year
to get back anything like normal.
I wasn't able to get to Montserrat after the hurricane
until after about six weeks.
So I got a flash lamp and I went into the studio
to see how that had fared.
Went over to the piano and opened the keyboard,
and all the ivory keys were covered in green mold.
And I realized then we were done.
ATKIN: By the time the hurricane hit, it was becoming a burden to them.
The kind of budgets that people had were long gone.
The accountants were really starting to dig into the music business,
and it wasn't the era that we built it for.
GILES MARTIN: I think technology changed, things moved to digital.
And so, just the equipment levels...
Recording studios started changing a lot.
They became more accessible,
album budgets started getting cut. All of these things.
KNOPFLER: Recording studios, they all have a shelf-life,
because in the end, they are ruled by forces that are bigger than us.
BECKLEY: I think the demise of the album
is directly related to the shift from analog to digital.
A lot of the restrictions we dealt with in recording analog
were lovely parameters to keep the reins kinda tight.
And with digital came unlimited options,
and I think things took a pretty serious shift at that change.
ROBINSON: It's as if there is something there
that drew all that music, drew all that creativity,
and then it was like, "The power's gone now."
So, that's finished and move on.
WILLOCK: We heard that our volcano was dormant,
but we never understood until our volcano started erupting
that dormant actually meant potentially active.
And so, I was in the studio.
One of the technicians came and said, "Rose, the volcano is erupting.”
(RUMBLING)
I sat before the microphone, I said, "Everybody, I know that you are scared.
If you feel like praying, pray. If you feel like crying, cry.
But I'll be here, I'll be here with you all the way.
All the time, I'll be here, just keep listening to the radio station.
This is Rose. It's gonna be OK. Just stay with me."
CASSELL: The sky was just, like, frightening.
Especially, I can remember the first ash plume
that went up about 60,000 feet.
The whole island, you have bright sunshine like this,
and suddenly it's like night, you can't see a thing.
WOMAN: No one's here.
RILEY: For me, it was a very, very bad experience, it was very scary.
Because one night, they tell you to go back home.
Before the night is out, you gotta move in the middle of the night again,
and the next day you don't know what to do, where you're gonna sleep.
Because all your mind, "Should I go home?
Should I stay in the shelter?"
You don't know what to do. You're confused.
(EXPLOSION)
CASSELL: And you know, we didn't understand the magnitude of an eruption,
what it can do to an island.
It entirely changed the entire landscape in Montserrat and the whole country.
And I was amazed what could happen.
SILCOTT: Many, almost all Montserratians were displaced.
Whether they were on that side or this side,
it was a rough time for everyone here.
And you just had to go somewhere else and start over.
I hate the volcano.
I hated the fact that it did so much to Montserrat.
STING: I remember sailing past Montserrat
a few years after the volcano erupted,
and sailing past Plymouth
and just seeing what looked like a nuclear winter.
It was covered in white dust.
This thriving, bustling Caribbean town was a ghost town.
And it was frightening and upsetting,
because I had so many happy memories of that place
with my bandmates, my children, my family.
It makes me actually kind of tear up when I think about it because...
it's a special place that was taken away,
that will never be the same again.
You can never go back and get that same energy again.
And for the people that lived there,
for them to lose everything in just one fleeting instant,
it devastates me.
WILLOCK: Most of us cried, because we lost our town.
We'd lost that important, integral part of our history.
And I can close my eyes and I'm still back there.
But since the volcanic activity, Montserrat has grown in size,
and for me, I consider it to be a pleasure to be around at this time
to see my island grow.
Because look at all the ash and the new fertilizer it has brought.
And so, I consider the volcano to be a perpetual part of who we are.
JUDY MARTIN: You can't really walk around the estate now.
And so, I feel it was of a time.
And now it should slowly go back to the jungle where it came from.
DORSFMAN: The '80s are like a hundred years in the rear-view mirror.
It was a very special time, and quality of studio, and vibe-wise,
the '80s was like the Renaissance, the golden era of studio recording.
COPELAND: Those studios are kind of an era that has gone.
Some types of music are best recorded in a big room,
but you just get your drums in that big room for a day,
and then you go back home and fiddle with it on your own gear at home.
It's just not the way artists make records anymore.
URE: There's footage of that place, there are photographs of that place,
there are living memories of that place. That's history.
Whether it's around today,
it's something that we still carry with us,
the ones who were lucky enough to experience it.
It's still vibrant and alive to us.
BECKLEY: As technology has evolved to the point
where, unbelievable, and people make whole albums on their phone.
But I think the actual ingredients, when you conceive of something,
head, and your heart, your hands to play an instrument,
you use some kind of a recording device to put it down,
those elements haven't changed.
GEORGE MARTIN: It's like seeing something you've created
falling into disrepair.
But it's like everything in life, isn't it?
Everything has a period.
You know, you bring something out of nothing,
and it always goes back to nothing again, whatever.
GILES MARTIN: My father was a man who got enormous pleasure
from other people's happiness. He passed away years ago,
but he passed away as a very content man with what he'd done with his life.
And Montserrat was a huge part of that life,
and a huge part of a dream that he fulfilled in doing something amazing.
I think that it had its natural end, and that it was closure for him.
(TUNES GUITAR)
Shall we tune the guitar for you, man?
COOPER: George knew the space between the notes
was as exciting as the note you played.
That rhythm that keeps us alive, the heartbeat, it's in all of us.
It's the heartbeat you hear in your mother's womb
that entices you out to dance.
And we need that. We need to touch base with what we do as human beings.
And what better an example than making music?
And it's about collaboration.
It's about the dream that George had of that wonderful space in Montserrat
where you had the sun, the sea, nature,
each other's company and music.
() "WALK OF LIFE" BY DIRE STRAITS)
4 Whoo-hoo
♪ Here comes Johnny singing oldies, goldies
♫ "Be-Bop-A-Lula”, baby, "What'd I Say”
♪ Here comes Johnny singing "I Gotta Woman"
3 Down in the tunnel trying to make it pay
4 He got the action, he got the motion
3 Oh, yeah, the boy can play
3 Dedication, devotion
♪ And turning all the night time into the day
4 He do the song about the sweelt-lovin' woman
♪ He do the song about the knife
3 He do the walk, do the walk of life
4 Yeah, he do the walk of life
4 Whoo-hoo
♪ Here comes Johnny gonna tell you the story
♫ Hand me down my walkin' shoes
♪ Here comes Johnny with the power and the glory
♫ Backbeat the talkin' blues
♪ He got the action, he got the motion
3 Oh, yeah, the boy can play
3 Dedication, devotion
4 Turning all the night time into the day
♪ The song about the sweet-lovin' woman
♪ He do the song about the knife
4 And he do the walk, he do the walk of life
4 Yeah, he do the walk of life
4 Whoo-hoo-hoo
♪ Here comes Johnny singing oldies, goldies
♫ "Be-Bop-A-Lula”, baby, "What'd I Say”
♪ Here comes Johnny singing "I Gotta Woman"
♫ Down in the tunnels trying to make it pay
4 He got the action, he got the motion
3 Oh, yeah, the boy can play
3 Dedication, devotion
♪ And turning all the night time into the day
4 And after all the violence and double talk
3 There's just a song in all the trouble and the strife
♫ You do the walk, yeah, you do the walk of life
& Hmm, they do the walk of life
4 Whoo-hoo
4 Whoo-hoo-hoo
4 Whoo-hoo
4 Whoo-hoo-hoo
Subtitles: [YUNO Media Group