the legendary abbey road studios

When we were teenagers, me and my friends would listen to the Beatles a lot. I fell in love with them because of my at - that - time girlfriend Giulia: she was obsessed with them, and made me listen to their music so much that I’d become obsessed too. Me and her also ended up taking a trip to Liverpool in 2008, which also happened to be deemed “European capital of culture” that year. I still remember crossing the Mersey river and getting to Birkenhead, the Cavern and other landmarks.

Now, from her perspective (she wasn’t a musician), it was just pure passion for their music: for me it was more, it was magic. I would find myself discussing their music and its engineering with other musician friends, and such topics as George Martin (the engineer behind most of the Beatles’s works) and the Abbey Road Studios would come up very often: we would often daydream of recording in the Studios one day.

Fast forward to 2016: I was living in London, precisely in Bayswater (as probably mentioned in previous blogs): the thing about London is, it has the best transportation in the world. You could be from point A to point Z of the city (regardless of where they are) at any time of the day an night, thanks to the subway and the bus systems, which work 24/7.

One day, I was supposed to record bass for SIMONE (whose name is pronounced differently than mine), a very talented girl singer. I remember getting the address from Gabrielle (the producer), so I put it in Google Maps and it had me walk from Queensway to Lancaster Gate, where I took the bus 64 to Saint John’s Wood. After I got dropped, I walked a bit, and as I reached the destination I raised my head: I was right outside of the studios’s gates.

Now, I’ve been there as a tourist before then, and I remember chuckling by myself: I guess Gabrielle chose the Studios as a good place to pick me up, probably she’d have shown up and we’d have walked or driven somewhere close by, maybe to one of the Institute’s rooms, which were right in the building next to it. I thought “No way we’re recording here”.

Instead, she came from inside the Studios. She smiled at me and opened the gates. Time froze, I asked her: “Is this real? Are we about to record here?”. She said “Yes, we need to go to the concierge and have you sign your check in first.”. I figured by then she’d have worked there a few times already, so it wasn’t that big of a deal for her as much as it was for me.

A dream becoming reality: I was there, I walked where they walked. We got inside of one of the Studios, it was a small one, but the mixing room looked very much like the control room of a spaceship: huge Rupert Neve desk, tv and computer monitors all over the place, walls of analog audio plugins defining its perimeter. Tracking room was fitted with amps, drums and a piano, all micced and ready to go. We recorded a track called “Attitude”, and there’s actually a video of it in the “Media” section of this website.

I would record there again with other projects, and yes, the following times weren’t as impactful as the first of course, but yes, whether it’s a big deal to you all or not, it certainly was a milestone for my career.