How many other producers can say that their problems include cobras, scorpions and having their equipment piled on bonfires during riots?

Armed with my prejudices about white South Africans, it was with some trepidation that I arrived at London's SAV recording studios to interview producer Greg Cutler, recently returned from a number of years living and working in South Africa.

It was with relief that I discovered a man who has spent many years and a lot of energy fighting for the rights of black musicians in South Africa. His reasons for returning to England now are all too obvious.

From humble beginnings working for Linguaphone, an interest in music took him to RG Jones Studios, one of London's earliest 24-track facilities, where it was quite normal to have a handful of records in the charts at any given time. This would be enough to satisfy most people, but Greg got bored. Weighing up job offers in Italy, South Africa and Ireland, Africa won because not only was the language no problem but it also offered sun!

A Bad Deal

Initially he went out to Johannesburg to work at Satbel Studios where he was to spend three years developing both his interest and his skills in production. Many of his friends were fairly critical of the move, and continued to be so when he stayed. It seemed like lunacy, if only because the standard of musicianship was so poor. On arrival in Johannesburg, however, Greg confounded them by working with one of the word's premier guitarists: Trevor Rabin and his band Rabitt.

After a few weeks of working with Trevor I went on to do other things and it was only then that I found out what they had been talking about! For the first six months I worked solely with white musicians and was unaware of the quality black music there is in South Africa. Then I discovered some incredible black bands and from then onwards, 95% of all the bands I produced were black. I began to have very little interest in white music.

I went into the music industry there literally fighting and worked hard to help these black musicians get the treatment they deserved. I always insisted that the record company treated them as artists should be treated.

As a general rule the black bands would get comparatively bad deals. A white band selling around 5,000 records would automatically receive better budgets and advances than a black band, that might be selling over ¼ million records: a massive number for the territory.

I was criticised by people for staying in South Africa, but it's morally justifiable because in a country like that there's so much you can do. In English society there are always people protecting minority interests, but there was no one like that representing the black musicians.

For instance, when I was working with the Soul Brothers, they were selling ¼ million records and the receptionist at their previous record company would treat them as teaboys, sending them out to the shops to get the coffee.

Walkabout

Unable to tolerate this sort of behaviour, Greg decided in a fit of disillusionment to seek pastures new. Australia was the chosen land but six months later he found himself back in Johannesburg. Was it the music or the people that made him move back?

The music was quite interesting, but I didn't really like the place. It was an interesting environment and attitude, though. There's a lot of Government support with arts council grants etc. They are very export orientated in Australia which is quite the opposite to South Africa where they do not see music as a giant export earner at all.

On his return to Johannesburg in 1980, Greg set up his own production and publishing house, Jumbo Music Productions, to act as a channel for producers and bands who needed help with their deals. These areas were ones of particular contention. For example it would be a fairly typical deal that included no production advance, and publishing deals concerning very small percentages. Work now involved all the major record companies represented in the territory such as Warner Brothers, CBS, Phonogram and EMI.

"By 1 pm the temperature outside the truck would reach 46 degrees centigrade, the air conditioning would pack up and there was nothing for it but to sit and wait..."

As a publishing company we struck a good administration deal with the major publisher there and got writers much better deals than if they had gone direct.

Meanwhile he was still very active in his own producing role and had been enjoying six very successful years with artist Harari. The fruit of those years were a total of seven albums, all of which went double gold or platinum. In 1982 A&M in Los Angeles came up with a big deal for Harari which involved reworking a lot of the material, so Harari and Cutler went to A&M's LA studios. At that time he was contemplating going to live there, but once there he suffered a change of mind.

Los Angeles is a very unhealthy place. I'm sure you know the reasons why. I spent three months in LA and three in New York and hated them both for different reasons, and although I was offered some production jobs in LA such as the Janet Jackson album, I couldn't bear the thought of staying.

So it was back to Johannesburg, Jumbo and freelance engineering.

Heat and Dust

Before I started freelancing it was unheard of. The territory has around 30 to 40 24-track studios which is a lot, and now there are about ten freelancers that I know of.

The beginning of 1984 saw the start of an interesting project: Hugh Masekela's Techo-Bush album. This was to place the trumpeter well and truly back on the map following a number of anonymous years after a long string of hits in the 60s. The Afro/jazz/dance album was to become an enormous hit.

Although exiled from South Africa, Masekela had a real hankering to work in Africa and with African musicians. The parent record company Jive Records in London (part of the Battery Studios/Zomba group of companies) decided that Battery should acquire a mobile recording facility to cater for the project. Thus the Battery Mobile was born. Built by the Record Plant in LA, it was shipped straight to Botswana to the middle of the bush and Woodpecker Inn. The producer was Stewart Levine, and though his work with Jive's South African subsidiary Priority Records, Greg was called on to apply his engineering skills.

Woodpecker Inn is literally miles from anywhere in the middle of the African bush and consists of a collection of huts, a dining room and a swimming pool. Greg arrived armed with the minimum of equipment and 'acoustically treated' one of the huts.

The concept of turning up in the middle of nowhere with a recording truck and knocking up an acoustic room was quite a task, and was very good experience for me. I sat there gluing things on walls and hanging curtains, and the room actually worked quite well, which was amazing.

There followed six weeks of extraordinary work. The environment itself was unusual: when not actually recording there was literally nothing to do, bar swimming in the pool. By 1pm the temperature outside the truck would reach 46 degrees centigrade, the air conditioning would pack up and there was nothing for it but to sit and wait for the temperature to drop.

"The smallest event can spark a riot out there; there's a very short fuse. I generally ducked under the mixing desk in those situations."

Equipment-wise the mobile was kitted out with a fairly typical selection for that time: MCI console, Studer A80 and quite an extensive selection of ancillary equipment. When you're in the middle of the desert you can't call up a hire company so we had lots of outboard gear.

How did the equipment cope with the immense heat?

Well, obviously the truck was air conditioned but even so it was a problem. The 24-track machine broke down once or twice, so we had to put it in the back of the van and drive it 500 miles to be repaired. The border guards were a bit strange about taking it in and out. It took a large enough effort to get it into the country in the first place and so they took a pretty dim view when we started going backwards and forwards with it! But in the traditional African fashion we were able to sort it out with a few bribes.

Trumpet Solo

We recorded Hugh's trumpet parts out in the open. It was an absolutely flat acoustic. Basically, no room means no reverb, and you can add room simulation afterwards. It sounded very good when we started putting a bit of Quantec on it; it completely captured the sound of a flugelhorn. If you put a trumpet in a dead room it sounds awful; you hear nothing because it's all absorbed. Outside there was nothing that could reflect or absorb the sound for about 30 miles, apart from the odd tree.

Some of Greg's experiences with African musicians would be enough to boggle the mind of many a xenophobic British producer.

You would get indigenous tribal musicians coming in their tribal dress with the most amazing instruments like drums with two wires sticking out and a wire across joining the two with bottle tops threaded on it and they would play the drums with rubber hoses. Or there would be a very rural guy with his guitar. If a string breaks, he'll tie a knot in it — simple.

I did come across some very strange instruments and sometimes they did make me wonder where to put the mic. Kalimbas, for instance, are African thumb pianos that consist of a sound board with metal prongs attached to it so that you can tune it by pushing the rods in and out. But by the very nature of the instrument, not a lot of tuning went on. I think I got the best sound from underneath the soundboard which gave very little of the actual pings of the rods themselves.

I also worked with percussionist Gaspar Lawal who has a collection of African drums, talking drums and percussion. African drums are tuned by leaving them out in the sun, then you adjust them by dampening them a bit and leaving them out again. In London you have to heat them artificially and you don't get the same sound. It was so nice when one day Gaspar sat there looking at his drums soaking up the sun and said: 'The drums are happy to be home'.

African drums also call for miking techniques that are not necessarily the obvious ones.

Always use ambient miking. The mistake people always make is getting the mics too close and then the drums inevitably sound like plastic bags, Which is exactly what they sound like if you get closer than about 6" from the skin. Unless you use ambient miking, they don't sound any different to ordinary drums.

"If a string breaks, he'll tie a knot in it — simple."

Big Trouble

Working in the bush was not without its traumas. At the time, Greg hated it but looking back he can see the funny side!

There wasn't much real danger, except from pythons which are big enough to eat cows, though there were some cobras and scorpions. The dog got eaten by a python. We had some local black guys who cooked for us and they could quite casually look up from what they were doing, be confronted by a python, lop off its head and then just carry on.

A different kind of danger, however, dwells in the city.

Doing live sound I have often been caught up in riots. The smallest event can spark a riot out there; there's a very short fuse. I generally ducked under the mixing desk in those situations.

What people tend to forget is that it's not a clear cut black and white conflict. I never felt personally threatened or in danger, even when I was the only white person there. My Juno 60 wasn't so lucky, however, and has just been rebuilt. I lent it to a band for a gig and it was almost completely destroyed in a riot. At the same show, a sound hire guy had £50,000 worth of gear piled on a bonfire which for a one man band is quite a loss to bear. It's impossible to insure against rioting, especially in South Africa, and it's virtually impossible to insure anything in the townships.

I continued working and producing in Johannesburg for the next year but by the end of 1985, in view of the political chaos, I decided there was no room left for somebody working the way I did. Because I was working with black people all the time, I could sense the trouble looming. It wasn't getting physically dangerous but it was an untenable situation. I got back to London in October 1985.

Big Ears

Back home for the foreseeable future, Greg's new production/publishing company, 'Big Ears Music', has already signed three new bands and a number of solo artists. His obvious love of African music and wealth of experience beg the question 'Isn't this venture a little bit different?'

One of our bands, Farenji, is an African dance band but the others are rock and disco. South Africa is a diverse market with diverse artists. There is always a tendency for English people to think of African music simply in terms of beating drums; it's not. There is a very healthy dance music movement, and technologically it's just as advanced as the UK; the equipment we used there is exactly the same as here. Most of the things I was involved with would start with a drum pattern, then computers, and then synths and so on. The difference is in the feel and therefore in the way you do things. They don't use contemporary English rhythms and they have a far wider range of music than we have here, but from a production point of view and technical approach it's very similar.

The reason why many people in Britain have the wrong impression about African music is that African music hardly ever gets to leave the country. The other side of the coin, of course, is the struggle and isolation that South African musicians have to suffer.

Trevor Rabin's brother (who also happens to be my lawyer) has been actively involved in getting rights for black musicians by getting them proper representation. Trevor himself has also been developing black musicians and doing his bit for their cause.

There are so many people there who are trapped. There is a total cultural boycott of the country and it's catch-22 for the artists because they can't leave: in the long term because of family ties and in the short term because they are culturally boycotted. There are musical giants in that country who are never going to be heard outside.

Big Ears Music is currently interested in signing new acts and particularly writers for production/publishing deals. Greg Cutler may be contacted at: Big Ears Music, (Contact Details).