Get Down Here Quick and Mix Yourself a Hit: Mixmaster - My Story

By Pete Hammond

Telling the story of the 'mixmaster' Pete Hammond's incredible 40 year career in music production,
Get Down Here and Mix Yourself a Hit lifts the lid on life behind the hits and the unique contribution made by Pete to countless hit records, many of which came to define the Stock Aitken and Waterman era and the unforgettable sound of pop music in the 80's From the early days freezing his butt off in the van doing gigs around Europe, to collecting countless gold and platinum dis for his production and mixing skills for PWL, Simon Cowell and many other major labels and artists, Pete will take you on an unforgettable journey from struggling musician to award-winning record remixer and all points in between. With the immortal words of Pete Waterman which make the title of this book Pete did indeed 'get down there' and the hits flowed and flowed. Pete Hammond, an invaluable contributor to British pop music history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: G2 Rights
• Release date: Jul 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781782811640

Book preview

Chapter one

I guess it must have been 1950 or 1951 when I first became aware of music. I would have been a messy little three-year-old at the time - I was lucky to have made it to three as I had suffered a severe case of pneumonia aged 18 months and nearly died.

I remember it was lunchtime. The radio was on as I was eating my mashed potatoes with two fried eggs on top – it was all that my mum could afford at the time.

The song playing on the radio was, People will think we’re in love, from the musical Oklahoma. The lyric started with,

Don’t throw…bouquets at me.

As a three-year-old I had no idea what a bouquet was; I thought it was Buckets that they were singing about and I had a strange vision in my head of a man throwing buckets at a lady… very odd I thought?

My parents, Miriam and Kenneth, (better known as Sissy and Kenny) had married after my father’s return from war service in the Fleet Air Arm, based in South Africa. We were living in two rooms at the top of a big old house in Carshalton, Surrey. In the first few years after World War Two there was very little housing available and the local council had given my parents this temporary accommodation as a result of my birth on the 23rd of June 1947.

In September 1950 my brother Geoffrey was born and two years later Sis and Ken were given a brand-new, two-bedroom council maisonette on a new housing estate in Coulsdon, Surrey, about six miles away.

My father was an intelligent man and had a good job designing electronic control systems for the huge dry cleaning machine manufacturer, Neil and Spencer. He earned a good income and we were one of the first families in the road to be able to afford a Stereo Radiogram.

Although it was fully equipped to play 45rpm stereo records, at the time the only records available were in the 10-inch mono, breakable, 78 rpm format. I remember one of the first 78’s we bought was Paul Anka’s, Diana, which I played over and over again. We also bought quite a few records on the Embassy Label, which were budget records sold in Woolworth.

They were usually cover versions of the latest hits made by unknown artists and session musicians - and occasionally Stars working under false names!

I remember how I used to stack ten of these records on the auto-changer. I would then sit and watch it in action; more fascinated by the mechanism than the actual music!

Coulsdon is a small town situated on the A23 between Croydon and Gatwick Airport. If you approached the town from the north end in the early hours of the morning in the early 1960’s you could smell the bread cooking in the small bakers shop. We also had a fine selection of shops including a Woolworth, a Co-op, a Sainsburys (where you got served by people in white coats behind a counter), two shoe shops, a couple of restaurants and a local electrical appliance store, appropriately named, GHT Sparks.

It wasn’t long before GHT Sparks started to stock the new Stereo 7-inch 45rpm unbreakable records. In those early days the shop had three record turntables behind the counter and three small soundproof booths, where you could listen before buying your record.

After selecting the requested record from the shelf, the assistant would put it onto one of the three turntables and tell you to go to the appropriate booth. I remember so clearly the first 7-inch record I bought in 1958. It was Lonnie Donegan’s, Tom Dooley, which I didn’t particularly like but it was the best 45rpm single the shop had at the time.

I felt no aspirations to become a musician at that time. However, in 1959 Eddie Cochran’s, C’mon Everybody, was released on a stereo 45rpm and I bought a copy. I loved the sound of the guitar intro and played it over and over again. Around about the same time Duane Eddy started releasing Twangy Guitar records. It was after hearing these great electric guitar sounds that I felt the first stirrings of what was to be a long and eventful career in the Music Industry!

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Chapter two

The road that we lived in was a Cul-de-sac near the top of a hill overlooking Chipstead Valley. It was built on sloping ground, and had a large oval green in the centre where the children used to play football and cricket. Sport was never really my thing although I did join in with the other kids most of the time.

On the other side of the green lived Bert and Vie Carlo with their only son, John. John and I had become friends playing on the hilly pavements with our, Box Carts, made out of old pram wheels and orange boxes. John always had the best cart!

I was a rather reserved child and quite well spoken, whereas John was quite the opposite. He used to spit and swear all the time. I can still hear my parents saying,

Keep away from him, that boys trouble!

John was eighteen months older than me and several inches taller; he also used to bully me a bit. He once took delight in aiming his airgun at me from his window and shooting at my feet! However, in general we shared a common interest in the carts and music and for the most part we got along and had a laugh.

John was the most spoilt person that I have ever met. At any time of the day or night he would walk into the kitchen through the side door of his parent’s ground floor maisonette and say things to his mother like,

Cuppa tea mum, or, Cook us egg bacon and chips. But the best one was Grease me hair mum; at which point which he would plonk himself down on a kitchen chair whilst Vie stopped whatever she was doing and proceeded to massage copious amounts of Brylcreem into his hair.

Vie would immediately drop whatever she was doing to follow John’s orders. Even when he swore in front of her she would just laugh and say,

Oooh! Ain’t e awful?

At John’s house the family lived in the kitchen, or in his dad’s case, the shed. The lounge was a showpiece and out of bounds to everybody!

The kitchen was where John had his Philips tape recorder. We used to tape stuff off of the radio in those days, just as kids download pirate mp3’s from the internet today.

In 1961 my father bought a Grundig Tape Recorder – I think he got it from someone at work. It was a massive thing in a big wooden cabinet that was the size of a wardrobe except half as tall. It had a huge twelve-inch speaker in the front and the best-ever bass sound. John was really jealous!

Meanwhile we were both nagging our parents to buy us guitars. I had no luck at first, but naturally John was bought a brand new solid electric guitar complete with a Selmer Little Giant amplifier and a Watkins Copycat Echo unit! Shortly after that we had a bad falling out and stopped talking.

I desperately wanted a guitar and even resorted to making a single string instrument out of a piece of wood and some wire. After some practice I managed to play some very simple tunes on it. My mum and dad were impressed and eventually paid Potters music shop in Croydon £5.00 for an acoustic guitar - with a Pitch Pipe to help me to tune it properly.

Before long I was able to play a selection of one finger tunes. However, it was my parent’s Bingo trip to the Stanhope Working Mans Club in Carshalton (frequented incidentally by my parent’s friend, who just happened to be Cliff Richard’s Nan) that inspired me to take playing the guitar more seriously.

I remember it was a Sunday evening, and my mum had mentioned that there was going to be a live band on at the club. I was dying to see a real band, and after a lot of begging and pleading, my brother Geoff and I were allowed to go with them – it was a bit naughty as it was school in the morning and we should really have been going to bed early

Cliff Richard and the Shadows were riding high in the Charts at the time and the band playing at the club had modelled themselves on The Shadows. They were called, The Strangers. They had the same line up as The Shadows, they had the same guitars, were playing all the Shadows tunes, and doing The Shadows Walk.

The group leader announced that they were going to play The Shadows hit, Apache. The rhythm guitarist, who was playing Chords, had been fascinating me. As they started the tune, I noted the position of the fingers of his left hand on the frets, then I memorised them. When we arrived home, well after midnight, I went straight to my guitar, copied the fingering for the chord I had memorised, and started strumming. From the other room I heard from my dad’s angry voice…

For Christ’s sake stop that bloody row at this time of night; you’ll wake the neighbours up!

From that day my playing never stopped improving. However, although I was becoming quite proficient on the guitar, I was frustrated because I had nobody to play with or bounce ideas off.

John Carlo on the other hand had got nowhere. From the street outside his house I used to see him in the, Sacred Lounge, standing in front of the mirror that hung above the fireplace, guitar in hand, posing, amplifier turned up full, and making the most horrible discordant noise.

Then one day we got talking again and I told him that I had a guitar as well…

Go and get it and bring it over. He said. So I did.

He was astounded by the progress I’d made and immediately wanted me to show him how to tune his guitar and play it properly. Within a few days we were playing simple stuff together and working out new tunes to play.

Next door to John were Mr. and Mrs. Spiller and their two sons Brian and Derek. Derek had taken an interest in our progress and decided to buy himself a cheap drum kit.

Now we were half way to having a band but we had no bass player. John had already decided that he was going to be Lead Guitarist, so I was once again forced to hassle my parents for a bass guitar and amp. In the end I managed to talk them into buying me a cheap Fenton Weill bass guitar for thirty quid, but they couldn’t stretch to an amp as well. So the good old Grundig tape recorder with the 12-inch speaker got the gig.

We were all too shy to open our mouths and sing at that time, but luckily another one of our neighbours, Dave Smithson, stepped forward and said he’d give it a go. After quite a lot of practising we had half a dozen songs we could perform and went out and got ourselves a couple of local, bookings.

Meanwhile, drummer Derek had a couple of other guitarist friends who played a lot of country music. They asked Derek if he would play some drums for them, and did he know a bass player? Derek put my name forward. We had couple of rehearsals before going out on our first gigs as, The Sundowners!

I wasn’t mad about the Sundowners music, but it was good practice; however, it quickly burnt out the mains transformer in the poor old Grungig tape recorder! It wasn’t long before I left them in favour of doing the first of the gigs with John Carlo, which was a bit of a problem because I now had no amp! Kenny (dad) came to the rescue and bought me an amplifier; it wasn’t very good and the speaker buzzed all the time, nevertheless John and I were now able to do our debut gig at The Pigeon Club, in Carshalton

To our delight (and surprise) we went down very well, although we were told several times by the committee man to, Tone it down a bit!

John Carlo and I attended different schools. I was at Woodcote County Secondary, which had a good reputation, whilst he went to Chipstead Valley School, which (at the time) had a bad reputation.

Word soon got around at my school that I was in a band. However, I soon found out that I wasn’t the only one at my school making music. I was in the B stream, and I discovered that some boys in the A stream had also recently bought guitars and drums. The boy with the drums was Roger Lowe, who coincidentally I had known since my days in temporary accommodation. He currently lived opposite us in our Cul-de-sac.

John Carlo and I were playing more guitar style music by bands like The Shadows, The Ventures, Duanne Eddy and Johnny Kid and the Pirates etc., whereas Roger and his friends were more vocal harmony orientated. They were into the two big new vocal groups, The Beatles and The Stones…they also needed a bass player!

They’d heard I was playing the bass and invited me along to one of their rehearsals in Roger’s front room. I’d already started to get into The Beatles and quickly learnt the bass line to, Love me do. After that one rehearsal I knew that I wanted to play more of the same.

Although they had two good rhythm guitarists, Mick Cranmer and Derek Gaskell, neither Mick nor Derek was any good on lead guitar. John Carlo on the other hand had developed into a not bad lead player - although in my opinion his timing could have been better at times.

If the truth were told, John and I had never been overly impressed with our drummer Derek or singer Dave’s vocals. Inevitably John and I joined Roger’s band and The Black Cats were born!

We started playing at the school concerts and boys club gigs and soon had a healthy local following of fans. By now I’d managed to save up some cash and I’d bought myself a Goodmans 18inch bass speaker – I had to make the cabinet myself.

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Chapter three

It was now 1961 and I was 15 years old and about to leave school. Although the band was getting more and more gigs, my mum insisted that I get a proper job.

I was quite clued up on electronics, having been taught a lot by my father. I also had a flair for Technical Drawing. A job in either field would have been acceptable to me.

As it turned out, my mum found me a job. She was working in Woolworths, in Wallington, and had spotted an advertisement for an apprentice radio and TV engineer in the shop window of O.E. Hatchard’s, Radio and TV Sales and Repairs. I went for an interview and got the job, which involved one day a week attending Carshalton Technical College studying for my City & Guilds in Radio and TV servicing. I was paid the princely sum of, one pound, eleven shillings and thrupence a week (about £1.55 in today’s money).

Only four people worked at Hatchards: Mr Hatchard (the owner), Gilbert (the TV engineer and manager), Derek Hill (the senior apprentice) and me.

Derek was a good-looking twenty-one-year-old who used to do all the so-called field servicing using the company van. Gilbert on the other hand was in his late forties, had a Friar Tuck bald head, moustache, and brown coat. He was responsible for all the workshop repairs and also served in the shop when Mr Hatchard wasn’t there. He was just like Ronnie Barkers Open all hours character Arkwright.

Gilbert was a major bore. Every day at lunchtime the BBC would play Brass Band music whilst displaying the Test Card. Gilbert loved it and to my annoyance, always had it on very loud. Derek and I were never ever allowed to have any Pop music playing. We weren’t allowed to enjoy ourselves, oh no! I hated Gilbert, he was living in the dark ages – every Friday he made me dust everything in the shop windows, then he made me get down on my hands knees to polish (with a tin of polish and a rag) the worn, rotten brown lino (it was actually falling apart) on the shop floor.

Mr. Hatchard was quite old and didn’t do much at all. He spent most of his time on the phone to his bookie. I also think he must have suffered from a bad case of piles, because whenever I was sent out for shopping he always insisted that I get, the very softest toilet rolls!

Initially I was taught how to fix electric irons and fires, as well as light fittings and appliances from the nearby Greyhound Pub, which were all covered in a thick nicotine coating that was brown and sticky to the touch, Yuk!

Most days Derek was out on the road and I didn’t see a great deal of him. However, occasionally there were deliveries or pickups that required two men. It was on those occasions that I was sent out with Del. He was a good laugh; as soon as we left the shop we headed straight to the café for a sausage sandwich.

On one such outing we got to talking about music and, guess what…? He was in a band as well!

Although there was five years between us we started to get on very well. I told him I was a bass player and discovered he was a singer. He kept bragging about how brilliant his lead guitarist was, I was giving it the, Yea Yea., my guitarist is brilliant as well. He suggested that I come round to his place one lunch time for a jam. It sounded like fun so I did. I was very very impressed with his lead guitarist. Well I would be wouldn’t I…? His lead guitarist was the, now legendary, Jeff Beck!! According to Derek, Jeff was a little eccentric and once drove his car over his lovely Pink Stratocaster after a row with his girlfriend!

So I started to hang out with Derek and Jeff. Derek drove a green and cream two tone Ford Zodiac with white walled tyres. We used to go cruising in it.

One evening we went to my parent’s place where we met my lead guitarist, John. Jeff Beck picked up John’s guitar and started playing – we were all open mouthed as we watched his extraordinary renditions of well known, Chet Atkins, guitar picking tunes.

Then one day another local group borrowed my new, Wallace, bass amplifier, just to see how it sounded for lead work. Me, Jeff, Del and John all went along to the Coulsdon Youth Club to have a listen.

Most of the boys were watching the band, but the girls weren’t all that interested…. until Jeff was invited up to do a guest appearance on lead guitar. Everyone, including all the girls, stood still and watched, in awe of his playing!

It wasn’t long after that that Jeff Beck was offered the job playing lead in The Yardbirds. He joined them and was with them for eighteen months before forming The Jeff Beck Band with Rod Stewart on lead vocals. Jeff is now a major American star!

Eventually Derek left Hatchards for a better TV repair job in Croydon, which provided him with a company Bedford van that he was allowed to use privately (or so he said). With the departure of Jeff Beck, Del’s group split up. Del and I remained friends and he used to help us out by driving us to and from gigs in his company van.

Soon after that I discovered that I’d not been officially registered as an apprentice, and therefore Mr Hatchard should have been paying considerably more. As I was not registered, I left Hatchard’s for a job in the radio & TV department of Kennard’s department store in Croydon. On my last Friday at Hatchard’s I put so much polish on the floor that it would take ages to polish it in….then I got up and refused to do any more.

Gilbert had to do it!

One of the most popular venues in our area was Wallington Public Halls. Every Tuesday they had a major band playing there. My band, The Black Cats, became a popular local support band. We shared the dressing room with countless big names including Elton John (who played piano in Long John Baldry’s band), Johnnie Kidd and the Pirates, The Nashville Teens, The Hollies (who were amazing), Jo Brown and the Bruvvers and most notably, The Rolling Stones. I can still remember how we chatted casually with the band backstage, and how Mick Jagger asked, Who’s got the pills? while they were getting ready to go on!

Many years later I was at a Fanfare Records Christmas party with Simon Cowell when Bill Wyman turned up. We got chatting and I discovered that Bill has the most amazing memory. We talked about the night we shared the dressing room at Wallington over twenty years previous. He remembered everything about the night - even recalling the name of the warm up DJ! My wife Jenny and I also had the pleasure of being invited to Bill’s wedding reception at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane, after his marriage to Mandy Smith. That was a very good night indeed!

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Chapter four

My first recording studio experience came in 1963, as a result of The Black Cats winning joint first place in a Beat Group competition. The competition was held in Carshalton Park, after the annual Carshalton Carnival. The Black Cats shared first place with a group called, The Remainder. The Black Cats and The Remainder were both good bands and, although rivals, we were also good mates. The Black Cats were known for playing Beatles, Stones and Blues tunes, often featuring our new rhythm guitarist cum singer, Mick Cranmer, doubling on Harmonica, or, Harp, as it was often called. The Remainder were better known for their great covers of The Zombies records. Who could have imagined that years later The Remainder’s lead guitarist, Rob Davis, and bass player, Ray Stiles, would become the founder members of mega successful Glam Rock group, Mud.

Our prize for winning the competition was two hours recording time in R.G. Jones recording studio in Morden. We only had time to record two songs, so we chose the old