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Number 6504
Linwood looked a good bet.
"We
rented a place on Linwood street where we could do our
song writing. It was in a large basement beneath my barber's
shop.
Ric organised
the deal, but we split the costs
50-50. The basement held a piano and a tape recorder.
It seemed to be away from everything and was ideal for our
purposes.
I
called it The Place, but this was not a reference to the Sidra
song.
There
was a general routine to our songwriting. I would come up
with the hook and the music, and Richard and Robert would
provide the words.
We were able to hold
rehearsals there at the Place too. I
would do a head arrangement for bass/guitar/keyboards/drums,
then Mike Terry would come up with the session charts.
When it came to making the
recordings I oversaw the session as Producer, and The Brothers of
Soul provided the backgrounds.
We cut a track
'here', the voices 'there' and vice versa. It was important
that we got the right studio at the right time and at the
right price, and we were always prepared to travel to suit
the needs of whoever we were working with.
We drove back and forth between Detroit and Chicago, through
all sorts of weather, blizzards, storms,
anything. We just didn't care, our goal was to make music."
Many
great songs were rehearsed in The Place and amongst them
was a one off production on Sandra Phillips for Chicago's
Okeh label. The song, "I wish I had known",
would wait over a decade before being acclaimed
by England's Northern Soul scene.
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