Entertainment For Lively Minds
"Hepworth was right" shocker...
Posted by Iainso on 16 February 2010 - 8:39am.
....actually, not shocking, but a bit sad, all the same...
from today's FT, on the sale of Abbey Road...
“What you have is a very, very expensive piece of heritage. If an artist goes to a label and asks to record at Abbey Road they will be met with maniacal laughter,” the media lawyer said.
Update:
http://entertainment.oneindia.in/music/international/2010/abbey-road-lis...
They've saved it. Yay!
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Even in these cash-strapped times...
surely Macca, Ringo, Yoko and Olivia could stump up the readies to buy it?
Would make a great music museum.
Maybe the National Lottery should buy it. Unfortunately the local residents would fight it all the way - it's not a good location for transport,parking etc. Has a very handy Zebra crossing though!
Macca doesn't neeed to buy it ...
in the late 1970s he built himself a complete replica of Abbey Road's Studio 2, called rather unimaginatively 'Replica Studios'. I think parts of 'Back To The Egg'* were the first album recorded there. He'll probably just buy up the old mixing desks, mellotrons and the bucket and straw that they used for the sound effects on 'Yellow Submarine'.
*Officially the Massive's favourite Wings album. Possibly. Well mine anyway.
Can't access the FT site at present.
Are they selling it as a going concern, or will it cease to exist as a studio?
It would make a great 'Flash mob' protest.
Just imagine thousands turning up and continually using the famous Zebra!
Sad
That is so sad. It will be bought by some mega rich wanker and turned into another central London trophy home for the spoils of ill gotten gain. Bastards.
Hold on, hold on
They can't make it pay its way as a studio. A recent survey found that out of twelve new acts recording for EMI, ten were recording at home. There are less of the big orchestral recordings that used to occupy its big room.
They can't make it pay its way as a tourist attraction because to handle tourists in volume you need car parking on a huge scale. And while Abbey Road's heritage is closely bound up with the Beatles they can't guarantee the cooperation of Apple.
And any application for change-of-use will attract the usual interest from the heritage industry who will insist it stays as it is.
I don't think there are any "bastards" here. It's a beloved institution at a crossroads (and a zebra) in the middle of a recession. I don't have an idea what to do with it but people who know far more about it than we do have been thinking about its future for the last couple of years.
EMI refuse to concede that it's up for sale but it undoubtedly would be if the price were right. It may go the way of Ealing Studios and all the other sites that were once a central part of the British entertainment industry.
Isn't this a problem similar to
what to do with old oast houses or cotton mills? Equally culturally significant but overtaken by economic and technological change also ultimately we still have the recordings.
I know what you mean
There are two questions here:
1. Do we need recording studios? I would say we do because I think we need the expertise and artistry of the people who work in them and I believe if all records are made in the artist's bedroom on a laptop then music will, over a period of time, suffer.
2. Do we need them to be in expensive metropolitan areas? I don't think we do.
from your piece etc
I think the people are the key factor, a recent bbc6 docu about Louie louie also highlighted this. It was the genius of the creative people involved that made these things the bricks and mortar are just totemic. If studio 2 inspires people that might be case for keeping it but from what we've learnt recently to get good sounding records we need to send bands on the road for 2 years and not worry about parque (?) flooring!
Dis-intermediation....
...is what they call it.
Twenty-five years ago people couldn't make records on their own and so they went to a studio, which cost money. To be able to afford that they had to have a record deal. The technicians came along with the studio.
Once you have the technology which allows you to do things on your own you can save all that money and have more control yourself. This, not surprisingly, suits most artists.
In the last fifteen years technology has brought about a dramatic democratization of media and entertainment. Nowadays everybody has access to the same tools. This has upsides. It also has downsides.
Fing is
....these guys borrow vast amounts of money for their so called leveraged buy outs, then flog off the assets of the business and/or load the business itself with debt, frequently paying themselves chunky fees for the privilege of arranging it, then the organisation, crippled with debt, has to try to survive. See also Man Utd. You want to read Robert Peston's recent book about the economic crisis. These sorts of deals are great for enriching the people who arrange them but typically leave the business itself hollowed out or effectively bankrupt. I suspect none of Guy Hands' own money is at stake here.
See Reuters: A 4 billion pound deal to buy the record label in 2007 has come to epitomize the woes of buyout deals done at the private equity bubble, with a high debt burden and a weak performance crippling the business
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61F3W020100216?type=entertainmentN...
Bastards.
Maida Vale
Would it be possible for the BBC to flog the Maida Vale studios and move to Abbey Road? Keeps a couple of National Institutions happy.
That's an interesting idea.
Suggest it to someone.
If Abbey Road
was in Manchester the BBC would probably be up for that idea.
The Beeb are flogging off its own institutions...
They're trying to offload television centre, which is a shame. We drove by it yesterday coming out of Westfield, I explained to MrsDrJ about the move to Manchester, she asked "why?" and I couldn't really answer.
I'm sure there are folk on this site who have worked there and perhaps don't see the importance of it, but when I was a kid it was where all the good telly came from. Of course with independent production companies it's all academic now: Go to a QI taping and it's in the old LWT building.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1566007/BBC-television-centre-may...
Why?
Because concentrating the nation's major media provider in one place doesn't really make it national does it? The BBC needs to be less metropolitan in its ooutlook sometimes - the regions are much smaller operations; the provinces need to be a part of that.
I would have thought
that having the nation's broadcaster where the nation's seat of power is, where the majority of major cultural institutions are based, where the financial citadels are primarily based, which has developed transport links to rest of Europe and World, where most media infrastructure is based, and where The Queen is mostly based are probably enough reasons why it is where it is.
Do the regions feel genuinely excluded by the Beeb which has stronger local and regional coverage than any other comparable organisation? Not to mention that it has always had strong presence in other towns and cities - the Natural History resource in Bristol, for example.
It smacks to me of reflex anti-Londonism and gesture politics at its worst.
Most of the reasons in your first paragraph
are exactly why it shouldn't exclusively be there. The concentration of everything in one place is potentially hugely problematic and inward looking.
We have gone through a stage of thinking that the capital is the only place where things can be and it's having an effect on the rest of the country. I don't think the BBC should be completely outside of London, just that having some of its national functions outside may actually be good for it (and us).
maybe The Word
should should be in Darlington and not Islington.
I guess
it all comes down to whether you believe in positive discrimination or not. The Beeb are capitulating to political pressure and not really doing what's in the best interests of its ultimate output.
Is it really the national broadcaster's role to try and shape the national landscape or merely represent it?
but why go to rainy manc
and not god's own county where the pies are better and you can nice drop of ale and where the nations poets, playwrights and artist come from oh and Cud!
involvement
The BBC cannot help but shape the national landscape - it is how much of that landscape is known by most of the country (the 50 million people who do not live in London).
There are good practical reasons for clustering most of the media in London - a base of talent, the largest population centre, the home of the UK government. Unfortunately it is fantastically expensive to operate from there, and as with Abbey Road the value of the property becomes higher than the value of the things made there. Which is why most manufacturing is not in London. Broadcast media may have to go the same way.
Setting up a media cluster in Manchester is probably cheaper, and in the end probably more sustainable. Maybe it should have been in Birmingham but Mancs are delightfully pushy and probably made a better case.
The Word will not move to Darlington because the people who work for it live in London. There is no great reason why the next Word type magazine is somewhere else. I believe Future Publishing operate from Bath (which I assume is cheaper and an hour from London by train).
Thank You
You've just saved me the effort of saying some of this, and possibly more succinctly than I might have too.
Its not a financial decision
it's a political one. Any savings made will probably be negated when the Beeb puts several hundred Manchester-based staff up in swanky hotels for a month to cover the London Olympics.
Slightly more seriously, I don't fully agree with you. Manufacturing moved out of London because it is generally very land intensive so it was logical. But generally sectors tend to stick together as that's where the talent pool is. Hence you have the likes of banking and the media in London.
So will moving to Manchester really save the Beeb much money? Land-wise no because they owned most of their property in London. So it comes down to wages. If the likes of Sky/Channel 4/ITV moved out of London (which they won't) you might see a slight decline in wages. But as the talent pool will remain in London, the Beeb are still going to have to pay (or close to) London wages for most of its positions.
It's not all moving!
And it will continue to be mostly based there but why shouldn't it branch out?
Why so many businesses insist on cramming into the capital and cramming their workforce into what little space is left there is beyond me.
We've got Harvey Nicks, electric lights and trains here too you know.
The Queen
I can't believe anyone still thinks the location of the Queen matters. Apart from attracting tourists.
I've recently learned to love London, but it does have faults and other places do exist.
One reason for anti-Londonism is that the media often seem to forget that London is an exceptional place, and the rest of the country can be different.
Overcrowded country? Yes in London and the South East, but have you ever been to the Borders? You could fit another London in the gap between Glasgow and Carlisle (it is 100 miles. Pretty cold and damp though).
People should use public transport not cars? Great, but works best when everyone is going into one place like central london (or Glasgow), not to a lot of different places like around Manchester.
Or indeed
when the public transport options available to you are so very limited.
For example, Whitby (where I live) to Scarborough (where I work): no train, one bus service [theoretically] running hourly in the winter, then half-hourly during summer. The car seems increasingly attractive then.
Cities and businesses grow organically
London grew - organically - to become a political and cultural powerhouse.
Just as Hollywood grew - organically - to become the capital of Western film.
Just as the mill towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire grew - organically - to become great centres of manufacturing.
Times change. Things change. Organically.
When you tamper with that you end up with something inert, forced and sort of pointless.
Milton Keynes, for example
Maida Vale
The BBC's studio's at Maida Vale are rumoured to be up for grabs. The parking there is even worse and I can't remember a zebra crossing.
All very sad but somehow rather inevitable.
Abbey Road Sudios Up For Sale
I've just received this news item via Estates Gazette Interactive:
Abbey Road studios for sale
16/02/2010 09:00
EMI has put its Abbey Road recording studios up for sale.
The property at number 3 Abbey Road, in St John’s Wood, north-west London, could raise tens of millions of pounds. EMI bought it for £100,000 in 1929 before transforming it into the recording studios where the Beatles recorded the album of the same name.
It is not clear whether the record label will sell the brand name along with the property. A solicitor said the brand was worth more than the building.
A question
Aside from The Beatles albums & Dark Side of the Moon, what else of cultural significance has been recorded there?
It occurred to me that I genuinely don't know.
Wikipedia
Is your friend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recordings_made_at_Abbey_Road_Studi...
Presumably that's not everything
Because it would seem that very little of significance has been done there. By significance, I mean something that will still be important 50+ years into the future. Cliff & The Shadows seem to have practically owned it!
I'd argue that Olympic might have done more (thought it is hard to tell how accurate any of the info we have here is).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Studios
Well, that's one way of looking at it...
But for me, The Beatles plus most of Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett to 1975 is more than enough really.
But I'll not argue the toss over Olympic either.
This is the elephant in the room
The brand of Abbey Road is built entirely on the following brands:
Beatles
Pink Floyd
Cliff and the Shadows
I'd say that only the first will persist beyond the next 50 years. Dark Side of the Moon will probably be remembered but the rest of their catalog will fall by the wayside. Much like the first Shadows album and their singles are all that is remembered now.
Anyway, how much is the Beatles brand worth? More or less than the sale value of Abbey Road?
Perhaps
you should remove your rock blinkers. There's every possibility that recordings by conductors such as John Barbirolli and Thomas Beecham will be remembered long after even The Beatles are forgotten.
Barbirolli's Mahler 5 and
Barbirolli's Mahler 5 and English Music for Strings iiirc just for starters-but of course one would then have to say same for Kingsway Hall, Snape Maltings and a few other legendary acoustics.
I do actually wonder what will happen to such venues and how the classical industry really works these days-http://dch.berliner-philharmoniker.de/ was a fascinating development from this point of view.
blinkers removed
I know what you mean, PR, but I'd say that the location of those recordings probably matters to about 300* people whereas the location of where the Beatles recorded probably matters to about 300,000*.
Obviously this speaks volumes for the shallowness of modern culture but the classical angle is likely to merit a blue plaque and nothing more. There are probably more people who like the Shadows**.
* Actual figures may vary.
** Myself included up to a point.
How do
we know NOW what will important 50+ years into the future!
obviously we don't
But we can guess. It's relevant when investing heavily in property, after all, because you are gambling money on something with the hope that it will give you a return at some point (unless the Queen, or David Gilmour, preserves it for the nation).
Anyway the value of the property without the history is somewhat less than the mooted value. So, any investor needs to work out how much he is paying for a bankable brand and how the value of that will change over time.
Apparently
This was recorded at Abbey Road
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Do_They_Know_It's_Christmas%3F_(1983_Version)
Any bids yet
for the anvil used on 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer'? Collection only.
It'll be 'flats for twats"
It'll be "flats for twats".
With a 'gym' in the basement.
And a branch of "I Saw You Coming" round the corner.
That's the way it goes.
Hepworth Ahoy!
Just seen the Abbey Road story on tonight's Newsnight, complete with Mr H.
It is a shame..
but move on, for Christ's sake
Opened by Elgar
http://www.emiclassics.com/greatsound.php
Saw Newsnight too...
macca hinted that interested parties from the non-finance world who have a connection to Abbey Road may be clubbing together...'...and good luck to them.'
I was with the presenter at the end when she murmured 'Maybe Sir Paul will pony up...'
lots of people seem to want to spend
PM's money for him, can't see why him throwing money at the problem will help any. Much better it finds a commercial/cultural use rather than being the subject of misguided sentiment.
No, you misunderstand.
I was talking about an outright buyout..a shrine to what the HJH achieved in their youth - a charitable enterprise even. If there were plans afoot to possibly cannibalise a place that was dear to me - and I could afford to prevent that from happening, it's something that might cross my mind, that's all. If Paul feels that way too, then great; if not I respect that too.'Twas but a throwaway remark..
The £80,000,000 given to,
The £80,000,000 given to, er, Robbie Williams probably hasn't helped matters.
Still, money well spent..........
EMI aren't alone, Rio Ferdinand earns more in a morning than Bobby Moore did in his career!
We don't need it..but
It is sad if it goes, but if Sir Paul can't save it who can?
Andrew Lloyd Webbers name has been mentioned but exactly what is he supposed to do with it?. By the way the price tag is £30m. Not sure how much money it would cost to run the place as a going concern.
And exactly what is Abbey Road in 2010 but a very expensive, luxurious recording facility in a very exclusive area, that musicians cannot afford to use. I am currently listening to Field Music's new album which they recorded in 8-Music which is a small studio in Sunderland. It sounds bloody lovely and I doubt it would sound any better recorded at Abbey Road.
The saddest bit is that I am aware there are a few tech people who have worked there since the 70s and maintained the old equipment like the Mics and desks used to record the HJHs etc.
So...How much would it cost to ship the whole lot, brick by brick, to Liverpool?!