It was twenty five years ago today that Goodbye was released, an anniversary that’s taken me by surprise (I was just finishing off the mixing of an album due out in November). So from the top of my head, here are some of the strongest memories I have of the recording of ‘Death is the End’, the second Dubstar album.

The album itself was essentially a ‘second pressing’ of songs from our repertoire from Disgraceful and our previous incarnation as The Joans plus a handful of new songs I’d written in late 1996 and early 1997.

I Will Be Your Girlfriend - Originally a The Joans song called Joni
Inside - New song written in Woodstock for Goodbye
No More Talk - the oldest Dubstar song, written when I was at school
Polestar - written in Newcastle for Goodbye
Say The Worst Thing First - written in Newcastle for Goodbye
Cathedral Park - written in Jesmond back in 1991
It’s Over - written in Newcastle for Goodbye
The View From Here - written during the Disgraceful era as a B-side to Elevator Song
My Start In Wallsend - written in Newcastle for Goodbye
It’s Clear - originally Brownmouth, a song from The Joans
Ghost - written at Real World studios for Goodbye
Can’t Tell Me - a song we played live in the Disgraceful era
Wearchest - a song from The Joans, written for a radio appearance eon Wear FM
When You Say Goodbye - written in Newcastle for Goodbye
Let’s Go - written in Woodstock for Goodbye

Goodbye was demoed and completed in five recording studios:

Dubstar’s studio at the Arts Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne

It was so bloody cold in there! But the Forth Hotel pub was just around the corner so it was easy to warm up at night. This was where almost all the songs from Goodbye began, sketched out on an old Atari ST and a copy of Cubase on a floppy disk.

Ancient tech but the tightest MIDI sequencer I’ve ever used

Jacobs Studio, Surrey

I put it to the record company that we record some demos in a proper studio down south, so we spent three or four days in Jacob’s studio in Surrey. To be honest, this request was more to do with me wanting to get out of my flat in Newcastle than actually needing a 24 track recording facility. We did a fairly good job down there though, and put together early versions of It’s Clear, My Start in Wallsend and a couple of others. My mum and dad visited us one day, they were terribly excited by the whole thing, and this was also the first time I had a chance to fully explore the novel excitement of the internet. There was a website that a fan had put together called the Dubstar Webgarden which I loved. We also started to get fan mail from across Europe, which was amazing.

And everything we recorded was on ADAT, an archaic format briefly popular in the 1990s but as reliable as any VHS cassette ever was. We even had a BRC which literally meant ‘Big Remote Control’ to run the four cassette recorders. My enduring thanks to Claire, the engineer, who made it all work.

It was during this period that our new manager Stevø was negotiating our USA record deal, and we met Nick Gatfield for the first time (who six years later would go on to sign Keane to Island Records, small world). I remember a very strong feeling of excitement and extreme apprehension, which would accompany me on every escapade Stevø would lead us into.

Steve, the man who brought you Soft Cell and The The

Stephen Hague’s shack in Woodstock

Our first trip to the USA, and to the magical woodlands in upstate New York. We stayed in Bob Clearmountain’s house and recorded at Stephen’s newly built studio, where the groundwork for I Will Be Your Girlfriend, It’s Clear and You Can’t Tell Me were recorded.

It snowed, maybe not every day but there was snow everywhere.

My most enduring memory of this time was the day the me and Paul Wadsworth, our drummer, were so bored hanging around in the woods that we decided to drive to New York City for the day, a journey of about two and half hours. On arriving we couldn’t find anywhere to park in the entire midtown area (I hadn’t watched Seinfeld at this point) and by the time we managed to pull over we’d kind of given up on the trip anyway.

Actual photo taken of me trying to find the way back to Woodstock

Then began the journey home. I immediately got lost leaving NYC with no map, no mobile phone, no internet of course and no record of the phone numbers for Clearmountain’s house, Stephen’s place or even the record company back in London. We left Manhattan and ended up in New Jersey. I pulled into a gas station just the other side of the Hudson River, pointed at the skyscrapers and asked the attendant ‘how do we get back there?’.

He said he didn’t know.

I said ‘but it’s just there, look!’

That didn’t help.

So instead of heading north and back the way we came, we headed west for at least an hour, into the dark, into the cold, and eventually into the snow. Oh, and did I mention that we didn’t have any money on us either…?

Real World Studios, Bath

We’d recorded much of Disgraceful at Real World, so it was a real privilege to be back. While the rest of the crew were in the main building I was staying in the producer’s cottage again (Chris was upstairs in the eaves) with it’s own bath and kitchen area. My girlfriend, now wife stayed with us for a week too. She was in the process of finishing her masters degree, and so Peter Gabriel and some of the staff set her up in a studio of her own in the main barn complex in order to complete the mountain of paperwork she was lumbered with. She passed of course.

RAK Studios, London

And then back to St John’s Wood to complete the record. We stayed in the artist accommodation, basically a house next door to the studio and frankly I loved it there. I remember playing the completed mix for Cathedral Park on my own at full blast in the lounge and being blown away, this was going to be massive. Later that night I met up with the rest of the act and our friends from Food Records at the Good Mixer in Camden. Someone asked me what I’d been doing, why was I so late? ‘Listening to Dubstar’ I replied, looking rather smug…I was gently berated for playing my own records and told that wasn’t cool. It was a friendly put down, as I often endured, but at that point I didn’t care. At all.

It was during this stage that I recorded and finished the B-sides for No More Talk in a studio live room that wasn’t in use. It was just my Apple Powerbook 5300cs and a Roland VS880, mad really looking back.

The aftermath…

It was a baking hot June day. I was listening back to the completed album at Stevø’s office in central London and thinking we’d gone too far on this one. I felt that by the end of the album the mood we’d created was actually a bit depressing, and the album was WAY TOO FUCKING LONG! If I recall correctly Stevø agreed. I was crest fallen, as was often the case in 1997, and made a running order on the train back to Brighton of how I thought the album should have gone:

I Will Be Your girlfriend
No More Talk
Inside
Polestar
Say The Worst Thing First
Cathedral Park
View From Here
My Start In Wallsend
Ghost
When You Say Goodbye
Let’s Go

And looking at Goodbye again today I still think this would have made for a far better album, a proper follow up to Disgraceful. But by then it was too late, and it’s certainly too late now. Oh well.

This article includes excerpts from DUBSTAR.COM. Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com

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Dubstar: Goodbye at 25