CHAOS A.D. IS BORN...PART 2 OF A 4-PART SERIES

We all settled in quickly and got down to business. Andy is very professional and smooth to work with. He has a great deal of enthusiasm and is very knowledgeable about the recording process. Trusty. That's the word. You know you are going to get a monster out of him!! He had recorded many projects at Rockfield and was very relaxed there! It was his suggestion to record there and we were like teenagers in our anticipation!!

Andreas recording

I spent most of my time on the phone or doing bookwork. Planning the recording, the release, promotions, tours and tour merch, would take all day and night. A manager works every day at unGodly hours, believe me. Events just spring up and things need to be recalculated quickly! This curbed my drinking alcohol abilities greatly and I had to keep shizzle together all the time. It was all cool! I was made for my life! My partner in the studio was little Zyon. We were inseparable and spent the days exploring the property whenever I could get a dip in the action. Max would cruise to the apartment in between his recording stretches also. Never a boring moment. LIFE was in the air!!

Me feeding Zyon

Soon Roxanne, Richie and Jason joined us for the adventure. Dana stayed home and kept the house together. Christina and Alex also popped in for a visit with the drummer of Fudge Tunnel, Adrian.

Alex Newport, Christina Max and Zyon and Adrian the FT drummer

The kids went wild! They were especially fond of the big field that ran along the side of the compound. It was rumored to have a ghost living in the boundary so the kids always had the edge of a creepy feeling accompany them when they rumbled there. Max and the other guys would also play soccer in the field. In the late evening and early morning, a low, thick, vampirish fog would creep in and settle for the night, washing away in the morning with the sun's arrival.

The studio was a playground also, with pool tables and gear. There was a piano in one room that Queen recorded the Bohemian Rhapsody on. It got a constant beating from the teeny invaders. One big happy community!

Richie in the studio on guitar

Zyon in the studio

One day, Max, Igor, Andreas and Silvio walked a ways to pop in to the studio Black Sabbath was recording in. No one was there but the gear was all spread out. Max and the guys stole all the BS picks they could see and laughed their asses off, telling me about it!

Recording was a long process so sometimes I would drive into the village with the kids and walk around, window shopping. The first time I pulled out onto the street I did not go on the other side of the road and nearly had a head-on collision! One time was all I needed to remind me and I never did it again!

Lots of stories about the songs, but one that stands out is when they were recording WE WHO ARE NOT AS OTHERS. The guys all laughed for a couple minutes, each of them individually, and Andy recorded it and jumbled it all together at the end of the song. On the song MANIFEST, Max wanted to sound like an old time radio broadcast so Andy made his voice sound like that on the song.

One day I was walking near the Rolls Royce and Max stopped me. "I have the name of the record." I waited for him to spill the beans. "I am going to call it CHAOS AD." It was brilliant...

Class dismissed...