大象传媒

by Bob Stanley

View of the auditorium from the control room at the Paris Theatre

Brian Matthew makes his way up to central London, to the 大象传媒's Western House, once a week to record Sounds Of The 60s with producer Phil Swern. He sits in the same 大象传媒 studio in the same building every week. It wasn't always the case. Recording Saturday Club and Easy Beat in the sixties meant Brian had to flit between 大象传媒 buildings. He tries to recall them all over a cup of coffee.

"The important thing about Saturday Club, which people can't really understand today, is how different it was, and this is all tied to the physical change in the 大象传媒 - which has been enormous. When I first did Saturday Club it was mainly a programme in which we had to make most of the music. We had two hours to fill and could only play eight records - I talked about 'needle time' and the union rules before. So we made our own sessions with bands and groups and singers.

"We had a big studio, an audience studio, in Regent Street called the Paris Theatre (an old converted Cinema). Another little studio called Piccadilly One, a fifty seater studio with a small stage - it's where I did my one session with Eddie Cochran. I was very sad to see that go because it was a very cosy little studio. We had the Playhouse Theatre where I did Easy Beat every week for a couple of years. We had a theatre out in Camden Town, which we no longer possess. We had Reginald Fort's mighty organ stored in a little chapel called the Jubilee. And then of course we were based in our own offices in Bond Street - the Aeolian Hall it was called - where we had not only our offices but a huge concert studio, and a smaller but still quite substantial studio where we did a lot of groups for Saturday Club.

"So that was a different pattern entirely, and we had all these facilities, which I'm sad to see gone because I think it's been taken away from us - we don't have the opportunity to make as much ... we still have groups in, but I find them sitting in odd corners of the studio we work in now! Popping out, putting up pianos and goodness knows what. That element has stayed the same, but it's far and away different from what we had at Saturday Club."