Mar 03 2003
Chris 'Vinyl' Blair.
Article taken from abbey road studios magazine 'playback'.
Getting a call from the Studio Manager and being politely asked to, "help him out as a tape op on the Abbey Road album" is a very Abbey Road way of starting a career. Chris 'Vinyl' Blair, then just 17, had only been at the studios for 6 months before that call came. Says Blair, "it is not the sort of thing you turn down."
Vinyl Blair has come a long way since his tape op days and he is now Abbey Road's undisputed mastering master. "What I am doing here is normally attended by the artists or the producer or the record company. It's the final bit where you piece the whole album together and normally someone has firm ideas about how they want it - but they are usually open to suggestions from me. I can come up with ideas that they haven't even thought of."
He's worked with practically everyone in the business from Queen to Pink Floyd to the Beatles. Ask him though who his favourite people to work with are and you'll get a surprise. Blair is not locked into nostalgia. "The Radiohead guys are very nice, the Travis guys are very nice. I've done them from day one and they are friends now. There's a Christian group I do, Delirious. I always enjoy them coming. They do about an album a year. Very high quality.
"If you are planning on having Blair master your album, whatever you do don't ask him to put vinyl scratches onto your CD. "If I had a pound for every time someone said I want scratches of a stylus going down on a record on their CD I'd be quite a wealthy man now. The two main requests are artists want it really loud up to number 11 and they want it to leap out of the speakers."
Make sure that you've got some idea about your running order; obvious advice - but not to everyone. "There's this band who would ring every day with a new running order. I must have altered the running order about 12 different times. In the end I thought it was a wind up." Says Blair, "you can sense the running order as you're loading tracks in. You might not load them in the right order because you can juggle them around in the computer. I've been doing this so long I can tell. I am nearly always right the way they are going to piece it all together.
Radiohead do however occupy a special place in Blair's heart, if only for the colossal number of reels of half inch they will bring to a session. "On one Radiohead album I did they brought in 122 reels instead of the 6 that most people work with. That was pretty daunting.
"Ultimately for Blair, "everyone is a perfectionist in this, because at the end of the day we're just making records for ourselves."
[nov.28.02] Everyone loves Chris Blair
While at Abbey road studios mastering the 'Everyone' album for Furious Records we took the opportunity to present our mastering 'guru' Chris Blair [pictured left] with a particularly fine-framed plaque of all the Delirious? albums that he’s worked on as a sign of our appreciation.
We’re hoping it’ll find a place on his wall somewhere between Sting’s Brand New Day and Radiohead’s OK Computer !!!!
Stu G.
Article taken from abbey road studios magazine 'playback'.
Getting a call from the Studio Manager and being politely asked to, "help him out as a tape op on the Abbey Road album" is a very Abbey Road way of starting a career. Chris 'Vinyl' Blair, then just 17, had only been at the studios for 6 months before that call came. Says Blair, "it is not the sort of thing you turn down."
Vinyl Blair has come a long way since his tape op days and he is now Abbey Road's undisputed mastering master. "What I am doing here is normally attended by the artists or the producer or the record company. It's the final bit where you piece the whole album together and normally someone has firm ideas about how they want it - but they are usually open to suggestions from me. I can come up with ideas that they haven't even thought of."
He's worked with practically everyone in the business from Queen to Pink Floyd to the Beatles. Ask him though who his favourite people to work with are and you'll get a surprise. Blair is not locked into nostalgia. "The Radiohead guys are very nice, the Travis guys are very nice. I've done them from day one and they are friends now. There's a Christian group I do, Delirious. I always enjoy them coming. They do about an album a year. Very high quality.
"If you are planning on having Blair master your album, whatever you do don't ask him to put vinyl scratches onto your CD. "If I had a pound for every time someone said I want scratches of a stylus going down on a record on their CD I'd be quite a wealthy man now. The two main requests are artists want it really loud up to number 11 and they want it to leap out of the speakers."
Make sure that you've got some idea about your running order; obvious advice - but not to everyone. "There's this band who would ring every day with a new running order. I must have altered the running order about 12 different times. In the end I thought it was a wind up." Says Blair, "you can sense the running order as you're loading tracks in. You might not load them in the right order because you can juggle them around in the computer. I've been doing this so long I can tell. I am nearly always right the way they are going to piece it all together.
Radiohead do however occupy a special place in Blair's heart, if only for the colossal number of reels of half inch they will bring to a session. "On one Radiohead album I did they brought in 122 reels instead of the 6 that most people work with. That was pretty daunting.
"Ultimately for Blair, "everyone is a perfectionist in this, because at the end of the day we're just making records for ourselves."
[nov.28.02] Everyone loves Chris Blair
While at Abbey road studios mastering the 'Everyone' album for Furious Records we took the opportunity to present our mastering 'guru' Chris Blair [pictured left] with a particularly fine-framed plaque of all the Delirious? albums that he’s worked on as a sign of our appreciation.
We’re hoping it’ll find a place on his wall somewhere between Sting’s Brand New Day and Radiohead’s OK Computer !!!!
Stu G.
