Abbey Road Studios closed for the first time in 89 years. Now It Works – Rolling Stone

Abbey Road Studios was prepared when they closed for almost three months in March due to Covid-19 restrictions. Many artists and orchestras had already started moving their bookings and staff had started working on an operational strategy. But still, the formwork gave them pause. “Abbey Road had never closed before,” said Mark Robertson, head of brand and studio communications. rolling stone. “We’ll be 90 next year, and it’s the first time the studios have closed. It was a really big deal.

Today, as Robertson and Abbey Road manager Fiona Gillott walk from the building’s entrance, where a contactless check-in system greets guests, to Studio Three, the hallways seem uncharacteristically empty. The studios reopened on June 4, but with reduced capacities. There are signs encouraging people to stay two meters apart, and Gillott and Robertson, talking with rolling stone via Zoom, wear masks until they are a safe distance from each other in the studio.

Studio Three is where Pink Floyd recorded The Dark Side of the Moon and also hosted sessions for Amy Winehouse, Paul McCartney, 1975, among many others. Normally it could accommodate a 30-person choir or a seven-piece band, but today only a maximum of four people can occupy the concert hall and only one is allowed in the mixing booth. Although musicians and engineers are hard at work throughout the facility, which recently reopened its cafe and outdoor spaces, the only other people visible in the Zoom meeting are a cleaning crew through a glass door in the hallway.

“We have to allow for a very thorough deep cleaning between each change of musicians or people in the room,” says Gillott. “At the end of a big orchestral session, it sometimes takes five people three hours to clean up… Everything takes a little longer, but the demand [to record] has been phenomenal. Robertson adds that the studio’s largest venues are “largely booked through 2021.”

During the shutdown, Gillott and his team worked with various UK music industry organisations, musicians’ unions and the institution’s competition, including AIR Studios, to plan their return. In the meantime, their engineers judged competitions and gave advice on home recording. The studio earns less revenue than usual, admits Robertson, because recording studios are a low-margin business, but Abbey Road has gained considerable support from its parent company, Universal.

When they reopened, they gradually introduced their services, starting with mastering and then mixing, and they have since taken many new steps to resume recording. As well as allowing orchestras to record in small, socially distanced sections – they sometimes link their studios so that more musicians can record together, even if they are not in the same room – Abbey Road has seen an increase in the number of musicians wishing to film special engagements there.

With no place to perform live, bands and artists showed up at Abbey Road to create segments for television and capture live streams for fans. In recent months, Bastille, Kaiser Chiefs, Celeste and Emily Burns, among others, have filmed performances there. More recently, heavy post-punk band Idles, known for their driving guitar lines and motivating vocals, aired a special Studio Two livestream. Considering the band, which typically spends 190 nights a year playing gigs, wouldn’t be able to raze their fans on the road this year to support their upcoming Ultramono LP, the musicians decided that doing it at Abbey Road would be unique.

“We were like, ‘What don’t you get for coming to see us in a gig that we can give you live? “, Says Idles guitarist Mark Bowen. “And having it recorded as well as possible in a world-class studio seemed like the way to go. We had talked about doing it in a room, [but] it would be obvious that the crowd was missing [and] you wouldn’t be able to record sound as well. So we were like, ‘Yeah. Well, let’s just go to the best place in the UK, the most famous venue and do something really cool in there and really unique and show people a kind of different side of Idles.

At the end of August, Idles played three unique sets at Abbey Road. “It’s different from TV or radio sessions, because we control every aspect of it,” says Bowen. “Abbey Road is the first place that came to mind. I was at Kanye West a few years ago, and even though it’s not a venue – it’s a recording studio – there’s a vibe that you have there. There’s an expectation in there that’s kind of fun to play with.

“One of the few joys of this distress – the upheaval that people have been through with this pandemic – is that there have been new relationships forged. [and] creative new ways to operate,” says Robertson. “And I think that’s the case with the creative community.”

Beyond live streaming, other artists have found new ways to adapt to Abbey Road. Studio One, the great hall Beatles fans would recognize from the Clip “All You Need Is Love”, is currently filled with percussion instruments, and new baffles, installed to combat Covid, are in place between the harps. The composer Christophe Beck, who wrote the scores for Frozen and the Hangover movies, is currently recording the symphonic part of his score for a new Netflix movie, The Christmas Chronicles II, which stars Kurt Russell as Santa Claus. While the musicians record at Abbey Road, Beck oversees things from his home in Santa Monica.

“One of the things I’ve had to deal with, with the pandemic and the social distancing rules, is the limit on how many musicians you can check in at Abbey Road at the same time,” says Beck. “I believe that number is 40 for us now, which basically limits us to one section at a time. We start with the strings because the strings play the most bars of each piece of music in a score. In this configuration, they do not have the opportunity to hear the trumpets sound behind them. So you really have to plan ahead and tell the strings, “Notice in the score that the trumpets are exploding, so pretend they are exploding and compensate by playing a little more aggressively.” So it definitely changed the way I normally like to work.

Since Beck only has nine days to track the score, he and his team use their time by recording strings, then horns, then strings again, in case they need to make adjustments for the mix. . Beck speaks with the musicians and the conductor via Zoom, which is almost instantaneous, so the workarounds are effective. He even likes the way all the instruments seem to be coming towards him from one direction, instead of their usual places in the orchestra, and might pursue that sound more in the future. He just wishes he could be there, talk with the musicians and eat in the cafe. “I miss the excitement of being in a place as historic and steeped in history as Abbey Road,” he says.

“People are just grateful to get back to work and create music again in an environment they love and are passionate about,” says Gillott. “And hearing the music created in the world again, it reminds you that this music plays such an important role in our lives. Without it, it’s much calmer.