Stephen W Tayler - Trivia

Trivia

In 1989, fifteen years after starting his career in the music business, Stephen did something he had never done before or since. He picked up a hitch-hiker. After chatting for an hour, Stephen discovered that this man had been a tea boy at Trident Studios, but had been fired for being late on the morning of 4 August 1974. That was the day that Stephen walked in off the street and was hired.

One afternoon in 1976, after Stephen had just finished a gruelling 18 hour session as a lowly assistant engineer, he was patiently waiting in reception at the studio for his cab to go home. Suddenly, the studio manager, in a complete panic, announced that one of his engineers had been taken ill. Stephen was told he had to replace the engineer for the session. The studio manager told him not to worry, since it was a simple job, "only" another 3 hours work. It was a session to record and mix a song for the BBC TV show ‘Tops of the Pops’. The BBC and the Musicians’ Union had a statutory requirement that the backing tracks for the show be recorded from scratch.

Now, what this would normally mean is that the band would turn up at the studio, along with the backing track tape that they had run off when they mixed their single. While the band might go through the motions of playing the song, most of the time they would just sit around, eating biscuits and drinking tea, for three hours. Having gone through the motions of compliance, they would then run off a quick copy of the backing tape, pay for the three hours’ studio time, and head out the door.

So, apparently, nothing to worry about for the young and inexperienced tape operator/assistant engineer Stephen.

But this time it was different....

On this occasion a representative of the Musicians’ Union came along to make sure things were done properly. NO chance of just swapping the tape. The song had to be performed by the band, and recorded and mixed properly.

Stephen gritted his teeth, downed a strong coffee, and did the job under the scrutiny of the band, producer, record company, and the MU.

It was bit touch and go, but the job was completed. The song ‘Why Did You Do It?’ was performed by the band ‘Stretch’ on Tops of the Pops the very next day.

Having completed his very first ‘proper’ session, and his baptism by fire, Stephen was consequently promoted to become one of Trident’s house engineers.

One of Stephen’s earliest mixes in 1976 was the breakthrough hit "5.7.0.5" for British band City Boy.

The single was also the record producer Mutt Lange’s (Def Leppard, Bryan Adams, Shania Twain, Maroon 5) first hit single outside his homeland of South Africa.

Stephen recorded and mixed two of the songs on Tina Turner’s 1984 ‘Private Dancer’ album, including the Grammy Award winning ‘Better Be Good To Me’. The album was recorded by several different production teams simultaneously over a very short period of time. The album notes have a very comprehensive list of writers, musicians, producers and engineers for each of the songs, yet somehow Stephen’s recording and mixing credits were absent for the 2 songs he worked on, and no engineer is listed.

The album has sold in excess of 20 Million copies worldwide.

In 1987 Stephen mixed 'Running Up That Hill' by Kate Bush featuring David Gilmour for the video of The Secret Policeman's Third Ball. 25 years later he remixed the new version of the song featured at the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony