John Pennington was one of those young men. Martin Hannett was the other. Neither of them was aware of the man behind them, but as is usually the case in these matters, they knew him. What they didn't know was that he was going to sneak up behind them, point the gun and bellow:
    'Everybody down! This is a blag!', as the pistol was fired; as they jumped; as the chairs went flying; as a slug of 140 decibels of sound ricocheted through the fluid filled cochlea through the acoustic nerve to the brain which recognized the sound as being a blank. Shaun Ryder firing blanks; to be precise. That's something you don't want to say to the guy's face.
    He cracked up, laughing. He had just come back off tour with The Happy Mondays; from the fat arsed regions of America, to the cholesterol clogged heartlands, the Mondays had been there, done that, and got absolutely off their collective man tits doing it. The pistol was one of the toys that Shaun Ryder had brought back.
    John Pennington laughed heartily as he told me all this. We were sitting in the dark interior of The Hogs Head in Deansgate, Manchester, with a pint each.
   'He just fucked up the session with it. Martin and myself couldn't continue to mix the track with our ears ringing. End of session.'
    The year was 1988
    The place was the legendary Strawberry Studios
 
John Pennington, the highy respected and sought after live engineer for Moby, speaking of his time in Strawberry: 'It was a great time, absolute madness sometimes especially when the whole Manchester thing kicked off. The Happy Mondays were the first street level band I worked with and they brought the culture of drugs and music into the studio. It was like the whole flower power thing had come back. And as for Martin, he was the dirtiest, smelliest motherfucker I'd ever met; he just stank. But he was a good mate and he taught me a lot in the time I worked with him. Like Shaun out of the Mondays, he was a fucking genius. In one way though, it was a dangerous mix because Martin could do drugs until the cows came home, and the Mondays had a plentiful supply and were all off their tits. I remember once Bez and Shaun turned up completely off their tits on acid. They spent half the night staring up at the lights in the studio because they thought the lights were staring at them. We had to turn them off and work in the dark. It was like recording with a bag on your head, but we got the session done. And there was one time when nothing happened in the session until Martin's dealer turned up. Then, when he got his stash, a pile of coke like the top of Kilimanjaro, he sat in the vocal booth with a 2inch tape slicing block for a couple of days. Just disappeared for hour after hour and then he'd appear for a few minutes, tell me what needed doing and then left me to get on with the session. He couldn't actually say that much anyway because he was lockjawed to fuck on the cocaine.'

I asked John how he got to the point where he was in a legendary studio, with a legendary band, and a legendary producer, and if it is socially acceptable for a man like me with access to a thesaurus, to use the word legendary so many times in one sentence? He excused my repetition, and then gave his reply. Strangely enough, it turned out he became involved with some of the musical greats of Manchester through his brief involvement as a teenager, with the Operatic Society. Such an august body is not normally associated with leading young men down the needle strewn path of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This, in fact, was the reason why the parents of a certain John Pennington encouraged him to enrol.

John: 'The Operatic Society was the best place to be if your parents didn't want you to be mixing with the kind of lunatic who fired blanks at you, or men who consumed a sizeable proportion of the gross national product of a Columbian drug baron. My mother got me involved with it in an effort to keep me away from the kind of people who could lead you astray. It didn't work. Obviously. I mean it should have done, because the kind of people I was meeting were very respectable, as opposed to Martin Hannett and Shaun Ryder who were more respected than respectable. In fact, the first big show I was involved in was ‘South Pacific’. There were lots of media types there from Bramhall; the musical scumbag fraternity hadn’t been invited for some reason.'

John described the evening; he was just fifteen at the time, sipping and mingling with the people who swung on the higher branches of music's evolutionary tree. Cliff Richard, the Christian's Christian was there. He didn't turn the water into wine but only because the bar was rather well stocked. As luck would have it, his manager at that time, was also the manager of Barry Manilow; and Barry just happened to need a group of fifty kids to sing with him at the NEC. Young John found himself on stage with the most famous nose in showbiz; mother eating Hobnobs in the wings; one of fifty angelic voices; it's not possible to be in a more wholesome group outside of the Little House on the Prairie meets The Waltons and The Brady Bunch in an episode penned by Mary Whitehouse.

But how did he go from sipping coca-cola in the opera house, to working with 'the dirtiest, smelliest motherfucker I'd ever met'? Incidentally, taken out of context that may seem like a harsh statement, but the esteem and affection John has for Martin was plain throughout the interview.

John: The woman who ran the Operatic Society had organised for a demo of show tunes to be recorded in Strawberry Studio and for me it was a revelation. Soon as I saw all the characters in the studio, and the technology and the desk and the lights; even the old analogue reel-to-reel tapes which seem like such an anachronism now, I just knew without doubt, that this was something I wanted to do. I left school not long after with a couple of O levels. I just hated school... always getting forced into the bottom classes. The only thing that I was interested in was music.

My mother suggested I apply for a YTS placement and I had a choice of going to Oldham Coliseum, Cavalier Studios (Stockport), Square One (Bury) or Strawberry. Strawberry naturally was at the top of the list. Apart from having been to see it for that demo, I knew of its history. So many bands had been there and it had a real pedigree. Everything from 10CC to Barclay James Harvest and The Bay City Rollers, Justin Hayward and even Paul McCartney… in fact theres a story of how McCartney had sat outside, serenading a couple who were waiting on a bus.

So, John turned up for the interview and won out over all the other candidates. Strawberry was the place to be and competition was stiff. Even God went to Strawberry; well, the Egyptian God, Ramses at any rate; though in the end he turned out to be a central heating salesman from Sheffield; but that is how highly rated the studio was. It was the mid-eighties; and getting the placement was an important step for John, for other than this what was he but another pair of legs to join the slow, grey, dreary caterpillar of the unemployed inching its way through the decade. Getting a placement in Strawberry gave John a shot at a career and he grasped it. His enthusiasm and dedication paid off when, a few months into his time there, the man who had the government money with which to pay people on YTS schemes decided to re-invest the money in a wealth redistribution scheme; rumour has it that he went to Las Vegas and blew the lot after getting blown himself by a hooker called Miranda, who coincidentally also happened to be a heating engineer called Frank, when he wasn’t turning tricks.

This should have been the end of a career for John, as it was for many a YTS placement. Luckily for John, he had been a willing and eager student, making himself indispensable in the studio; an extra pair of hands and ears for the in-house engineers. Strawberry made the decision to take him on as a full time employee.

John: Yeah. I started out in 1985 as a sound engineer doing everything from making the tea to lining up the tape heads and setting up the mikes. The money was terrible but the experience was invaluable. I learnt by sitting in on sessions with the in-house engineers like Martin Lawrence, Richard Scott and Peter Tattersall. The sessions themselves were with bands like The Smiths, Echo and the Bunnymen, bands where my mates were buying the albums, but I was actually in on how the albums were put together. I saw the different approaches they took to each project. One of the earliest sessions I was involved in, was when Echo and the Bunny Men were recording the album 'Songs to Sing and Learn.’ Will Sergeant was producing. It was exhilarating being around such renowned artists, seeing them in the flesh, and realising, for all their genius and stardom, they were just people. Actually, I'd describe the vibe as being very 'Radio One', meaning the bands would come in, get the job done and then go home; all very professional, clean cut and squared away.

The experience would make it easier for him later in his career working with acts like Moby. He learned how to edit the image from the person, something which is very important for a producer who has to have the ability to communicate with an artist without being intimidated by their reputation or body of work. I asked John, with the benefit of the experience he was getting, how long it was before he was put in charge of engineering sessions himself.

John: Six months. I was asked to start engineering overnight sessions which could have been disastrous. If you get stuck, who are you going to ring in the middle of the night? You have to think on your feet and get the job done. I was given bands like World of Twist and the Mock Turtles to work with and the confidence that Strawberry had in me paid off, because they got signed off those demo sessions. The Milltown Brothers got signed up as well as a few others.

I asked if he was making a lot of money. After all, Strawberry was producing a lot of incredible stuff, and being an engineer there had to be a lot of kudos. The studio must have been making a fortune.

John: No. The money was crap but then again I wasn’t in it for the money. Beside, Strawberry never actually charged enough for the sessions. Things were going well for me professionally, but generally speaking things were tough in the eighties with the recession. Thatcher had everybody by the nuts.

By 1988-89 Acid was on the rise. To some of the older engineers this meant too much rich food and indigestion. To John however, the new technological movement in music was something he slipped easily into. John had always been one to tinker with electronics and the technological side of things. He told me of how, when he was younger and playing drums in a band, he had rigged up a speaker to act as a microphone. He explained how it worked but not being technically minded myself, it went in one ear and out the other, pausing only to fix a fuse I’d blown years ago when I was told I had an arse like a horse.

The emergence of digital over analogue wasn’t a problem for John. Strawberry itself, by and large seemed indifferent to it. One particular incident illustrates how much it was embraced by John Pennington. The Housemartins were on the rise and recording in Strawberry.

John: ‘Yeah. They were a great bunch. If I remember correctly, they were in the studio for about six weeks; friendly, cool guys and great to work with and Paul Heaton himself always struck me as having that little touch of genius with his lyrics, but very unassuming. They actually wrote 'Build' in the studio which was quite unusual because at the time we had a very Radio One vibe in Strawberry, which was, come in, record, go home; all very professional, friendly and civilised. It was also the first time I worked with a producer called John Williams, one of the original Radio One producers. He was the antithesis of Martin Hannett in that he had a very public school background about him whereas Martin was very much working class. There was some conflict between the two, but I’ll tell you about that later on in the interview if it becomes relevant.

Interestingly, it was from John Williams he learnt that you don't have to make it different, so long as you get what the band is trying to say, of getting what a band wants, as well as the depth and breadth and touch of ingredient X a quality producer can give to a session. As he says himself, ‘the producer is a flux that makes it happen. This I’m sure you will agree is a very refreshing attitude for a producer to have, so many of whom hijack the sound of a band and make it their own, often to the detriment of the original idea. This does not mean that he can’t do that if required, but his first port of call, is to find out what it is the band want. It might sound obvious but it is sometimes the obvious things that are overlooked.

Anyway, at the end of the session, we were having a listening back party with Paul (Heaton) and Norman (Cook) and the rest of the boys and I slipped away. I was writing some stuff at the time on a little S1000 sampler. Norman Cook popped his head into the room and asked 'what the fuck is that? That’s fucking great!' So we had a little music battle.

A sort of Fat Boy Slim vs. Slim Boy Chunky

This little portrait of the Housemartins is interesting. At the time, there actually was some discord within the band, some members wanting the band to be driven more by guitar while Norman wanted to incorporate samplers and their ilk into the sound. John is too perceptive an individual to not have been aware of the disharmony within the band at the time but despite his ability to capture the best a band has to give, he didn’t pick at that particular scab just for a cheap anecdote; unfortunately. Rather than stoop to my level, he enthused about the good things that happened. This seems to sum up John, as a person and an engineer, deal with the fuck ups when they come up, sort them out, but then move on and reinforce the good. This makes him a very positive force for a band to have around them on tour and in the studio. It also makes him a very pleasant drinking companion as I can testify too, for the course of the interview.

Let me give you another quote from John, which I think is quite illuminating. He describes himself as "an engineer who can produce," and regards "producing as the bridge between the band and the medium." The fact that he puts the word engineer before the plainly evident excellence of his producing indicates how comfortable he is with the technology no matter how much it changes.

Even though John Pennington had learnt his trade by working with some excellent producers with proven track records of success, he was eclectic enough in his taste, and comfortable enough with the new technology, that he could participate in a musical High Noon, with Norman, the Man Who Would Be Fatboy Slim. Indeed, it would one day see him as the live sound engineer for Moby, touring the world. However, despite the eagerness and aptitude of John Pennington, for embracing the technological changes in the world of recording, moving from analogue to digital, Strawberry Studio would be left behind. Curiously, one of, if not the first studio out of London to have a digital recording multi-track X80 which was brought in for Stephen Street who was engineering/producing the Queen is dead album, for The Smiths. They were laying down guitars and vocals. John acted as the ‘hands’ to Stephen's ‘ears’ for this prestigious session.

Things were changing; technology was eating itself, devouring the past history of music and spitting it out into little digestible chunks; sampling was rife; it was the acid club era. Indie’ was morphing. Manchester, musically, was having its own little revolution that would see it talked of in the same breath as Liverpool in the ‘60’s.

John: It was around this time that I met Martin; when the Manchester thing was kicking off. He was in and out of the studio, and a good friend of Strawberry, really. By this time, though, he was battered with heroin and cocaine. I guess he was in his forties by then and had a lot of the stuff like Joy Division behind him but he was still a genius and in it for the love of what he was doing. I learned a lot from Martin, through working with him, on and off through the years. Actually, we even did some of his own material; electronic stuff like eh… there was a song called 'The Marlboro Track' with Martin taking over the vocal. It was a great time for me, learning and practising my craft. I had already worked with several successful bands but when Martin brought the Happy Mondays into the studio it was a whole different ball game.

Geetan: How so?

John: It was almost a new flower power thing going on with the music and the drugs; doing the recordings and then off down to The Hacienda to party. All the bands were there, the Mondays, the Inspirals and that whole crowd.

Geetan: Did the drugs ever get in the way of the recording process with the bands?

John: ‘No. They were just part and parcel of that whole scene, like the Mondays being off their tits on acid. I do remember when they went from acid to E’s because Bez was handing them out like Smarties. They had just come back from America and everybody was out of it; tripped out; which did lead to interesting situations in the studio. The Mondays had a huge entourage, so not only did we have to do the sessions with the band tripping, but there would be about thirty of Shaun's mates off their heads and wanting to listen in on headphones when Shaun was putting down a vocal. Sometimes the problems weren’t so much technical as logistical but we always managed to get the session done. Even with an extra thirty pairs of drug addled heads to deal with between us, Martin and myself, we did it. I can’t blame them for wanting to listen in and get off on the vibe of the genius that Shaun Ryder was. In fact, when you listen to the record, Wrote For Luck and E renamed for the album as Do It Better, you can hear Shaun and in the background, thirty heads humming along to the track without realising they’re doing it. You know what people are like when they have headphones on, that mumbling humming noise they make. Pretty funny, now I think of it. But by the second session where we were doing 'Hallelujah' I was becoming friends with the band and the entourage and being taken into the fucked up, drugged up and partying Madchester thing. But saying that, it was so exciting to be in this ball of excitement, the whole thing was pretty hard to resist. I had many a twisted night myself in the pub across the road; The Waterloo, which was a real oasis for dropouts and social refugees. I spent a lot of time retrieving Martin from it so we could crack on with the sessions. He was a real hedonist and that kind of thing is infectious when you’re young and your introduction to sex, drugs and rock and roll, came through the Operatic Society. Crazy stuff, but I was young and at least it served to get it out of my system. ’

Geetan: getting it out of one's system was something Martin never seemed to manage?

John: So the story goes. But, even though he got completely fucked up on heroin and coke, when you got him in the studio he still knew what he was doing and what he wanted even if at times, nobody else quite got what he was up to. Well, most of the time anyway. I did a session with him shortly before he died and that was heartbreaking. He was a mess, but like I say, most of the time he was switched on. I remember one time we had Shaun Ryder in and during the vocal sessions, he was prone to grabbing the mike and shouting into it. With this particular microphone that Martin had, that would have been completely out of the question. It was so sensitive it would have blown £2,500 pounds of kit to fuck; blown it out of the water, so I set up a dummy mike. The dummy was the one that Shaun grabbed and did his vocal into. But I had set up the real mike a few feet away, out of the danger zone and this was what picked up the vocal. Also, on either side of Shaun I put two other mikes, because sometimes he was so off his tits he could barely stand up straight and if he fell either side, at least we’d catch the vocal that way. So, we caught him in this little triangle of sound. They used to do this with Elvis, because he couldn’t stop himself from moving around.’

Geetan: How much hands on were you doing during these sessions?

John: A lot. On Wrote for Luck, for example, by the end of the session with that, it was a piece of music with no structure. I had to rearrange it to make it into a song; give it shape; verses and choruses. You can hear the end of the track where it fades out and the vocal track is going up and down in octaves, well that was me at the end of a very long day just playing around with it.

Geetan: You also worked on Hallelujah with Martin?

John: Yeah, but the version people are familiar with is the remix by Paul Oakenfield. Martin had got himself pretty fucked up at this point, and with the success of the re-mix, the Mondays understandably went off with Paul.

I showed John a quote from Shaun Ryder, referring to the Hallelujah sessions, taken from the anthology "The Dark Stuff" by Nick Kent, (Penguin, 1994). In defence of Martin against some criticism from Ian Brown (Stone Roses) Shaun Ryder said, "E's a fookin' mate to the Mondays, Martin. He's great when 'e's with us, man. Mind, 'e likes workin' with us 'cos we give 'im a lot of E durin' the sessions, right! E sorts 'im right out! During the Hallelujah sessions we were givin' him two a day and this were when they were twenty-five quid a go, right. But it were worth it 'cos he kept saying, "I can't feel anything but I'm in a fookin' great frame of mind." Plus it stops 'im gettin' too bladdered."

Geetan: but you still continued to work with Martin?

John: Yeah, I respected him, and he was a friend and he still had a lot to give. I guess I was a protégé of sorts. Martin had seen one band that he liked. It was a band called The High which had one of the original guitarists from the Stone Roses in it; Andy Couzins. Martin asked me to help him out on the recording. I think I’d worked with him often enough to know what he was looking for. In the end it was a good session. 'Up and down' and 'Box set Go' became a double A side released by London Records. I wasn’t surprised. Martin had a knack for picking up bands in the oddest of places and seeing something nobody else could while it was still in its raw state. Like the… eh.. Mock Turtles. He found them in some shithole in Heywood. So, anyway, The High did a straight cut double A side with Martin and me, then went on to record an album with John Williams at The Manor, which was a Virgin owned studio.

Geetan: Wasn’t that where Mike Oldfield did Tubular Bells?

John: That’s the one; great place to do a session but we had a difficult time of it. The High were signed to London Records but they didn't think Martin could pull it in on budget so… they brought in another producer to work with us, John Williams. It was a recipe for disaster as you can imagine. I’d worked with him earlier in my career when he was recording the Housemartins, and so I knew I could work with him, but John and Martin were from two completely different backgrounds. Like I mentioned earlier, one was public school and in it for the money, nothing wrong with that, but Martin was working class and in it for the music. As you know, Martin wasn’t the easiest character to work with either. To be fair, Martin actually cleaned himself up for a while but after a few weeks of pre-production he threw in the towel. Before he went though, the sessions were tense. There was a real edge in the studio which particularly affected John Matthews, The High’s singer. He didn't like singing in a stressful situation and this was anything but relaxed. It was such a shame for Martin, but for me it worked out pretty well. I was asked to tour with them, for the album, doing their sound which I really enjoyed. Engineering outside the studio was a new challenge for me and I welcomed the chance to do something different.

Geetan: If we can go back to Strawberry for a minute, I’m curious. With so many good things happening in Strawberry, and the pedigree it had, how come it shut down?

John: Lots of reasons, really. Thatcher had a firm grip around everybody's nuts in the eighties so things were tough for a lot of people. And the whole musical setup changed. Simply put: nobody knew what was happening, the old rules were broken, and it took the record companies a while to readjust and figure out what the fuck was going on. Subsidiaries and independent labels disappeared because the majors closed ranks and withdrew the money. The industry kind of withdrew to London and Strawberry had a financial shortfall. It wasn't charging enough, despite the incredible stuff that was being produced there, and with seven employees it was starting to struggle. It also failed to keep up with the cutting edge. The technologically advanced studios were down in London and that was where the money was. I think in a way it just seemed to lose the lust for the cutting edge. Strawberry got left behind.

It’s a shame. I remember working on some stuff with Martin, some of his own stuff, which was pretty good. He was after all, one of the people who made that whole Manchester sound, and it all probably ended up in a skip along with the whole tape store of Strawberry a few years later when the studio started to go down the pan. It was a fucking musical crime, Joy Division masters and New Order, just chucked out because the owners just wanted out in the end. Tony Wilson and Erasmus rifled through the skip and pulled some of them out, but what a waste.’

Geetan: Were you there at the end?

John: No. By that time I was off touring with The High. I was offered a £100 retainer, and £100 a day when they wanted me in the studio. That was so much more than I was getting in Strawberry, I accepted the offer. That was the start of my second career, if you like, as a live engineer. I got to tour the world with them, and ultimately it would lead to my being the live engineer for Moby.

Rather modestly, John didn’t mention the fact that he had an original co-write and recording of the Mock Turtles' massive number one hit, 'Can you dig it?' From the research I did for the interview I discovered that it was put together on a standby session in Strawberry Studio. John Pennington, the one time tea boy at Strawberry, had come of age, shooting from the hip, in production terms and scoring a hit record.

John: Yeah, actually I worked with the Turtles before The High. I’ve got some great memories of touring with them (Mock Turtles). We did one gig at the Faeli in Tipperary and my old mates the Happy Mondays were headlining. Incredible! The sight of 90,000 Irish nutters bouncing up and down to 'Can You Dig It?' was such a blast. The ground was shaking. I remember Martin Coogan looking out at the crowd with this big grin, and shouting, ‘fucking Hell!'

Just how good it was, we discovered the next day walking around the crowd. We found a bootleg of the gig and it sounded amazing. Naturally enough, though, we decided to liberate the copies from the bootleggers, which was quite funny. You might expect the police to turn up and stop you, but you don’t expect to get raided by the actual band. They obviously recognised the Turtles but all the bootleggers could do was watch while we liberated the bootlegs of the gig.

Geetan: Wasn’t the guitarist out of the Mock Turtles related to Alan Partridge... ah hah?

John laughing: No, but he’s related to the guy who played Alan Partridge. Steve Coogan is Martin's brother; quite a talented family. Martin has his own radio show now; Revolution on 96.2 We’re actually going to be interviewed this weekend by him.

Geetan: We?

John: Paul Ryder and myself.

Geetan: Paul Ryder from the Happy Mondays?

John: Yeah. We’ve been working on an album for the past few months. We’ll probably play all of it on the show and then get feedback from the public about which songs should be singles. It beats having a committee of suits from a record company make the decision with their accountant.

Geetan: How did you end up working with Paul Ryder?

John: Oddly enough, I got a call from Donovan.

I tried to place the name in my mind. What did he play in the Happy Mondays? Donovan?... John bless him, noting my confusion decided to give me a clue. He did an impression of Donovan, who was at one time called the English Bob Dylan. At least, John thought he was doing an impression, as he sang a line from ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man.’ He looked like a very butch version of Tiny Tim trying to pass a coconut; quite frightening really. I stopped him before anybody noticed. This pub is my local.

Geetan: Oh… that Donovan.

John: He said ‘I’ve been given your number by Paul.’ For some reason I had no idea who he was or who he was talking about, but he said ’I want you to work with my daughter, Astrella’. So, I said right, what, where, and when, and he said ‘Moonraker studio....'

(Note: At this point John and myself were interrupted by some guy who sat down at the table; he was rather drunk.)

John and I looked at each other, in the manner of, ‘is he with you?’ We both shrugged. The guy was fair haired, with a rubbery face that he used to full effect when he was speaking; as if internally he was passing through a hall of mirrors. He was impossible to dislike for some reason, so we let him sit there for the rest of the interview, like a lost puppy who turns up on your doorstep.
    ‘Did you know,’ the drunk ventured,’ there’s a beer called Moonraker? It’s called that after some people who saw the moon in some water, and they tried to scrape it up.’
    ‘Eh…right,’ I said. Not too sure what to do with the information. ‘So, John, you were saying…?’
    ‘Yeah, I got to the studio and found it was my old mate, Paul Ryder (bass player; Happy Mondays). He was going out with one of Donovan's daughters and Shaun had married the other. Paul had no songs and she just had some lyrics. She gave me a melody line and I set about putting together a backing track for her to sing over. Donovan wanted to put it out on his label.’
    ‘I didn’t quite catch her name,’ I said.
    ‘Astrella’
    The drunk exclaimed, ‘Australia. That’s a fucking stupid name for a girl.’
    ‘No,’ John said, patiently, ‘not Australia, Astrella.’
    ‘Oh. That’s alright then. Australia is a weird name for a girl. I knew one called Beryl once…’
    We waited for the end of the sentence before realising that was it.
    ‘So,’ I continued, ‘how did the session go?’
    ‘Well, it was good to see Paul. He didn’t actually do anything in the studio as such.’
    ‘He was taking a back seat?’
    ‘No. He was taking heroin. He was off his tits, high as the proverbial kite. In fact he was looking down on the kite for most of the sessions, but I found his presence was good to be around. Like Shaun, he has this great energy. Even though it was being dissipated by drugs, he was still a positive force in the studio…’
    The drunk leaned a little closer us and said, ‘'excuse me?’
    We both looked at him and said, ‘what?!’
    ‘Astrella is also a pretty fucking stupid name…’
    I leaned over my laptop, and in a very calm, reasonable tone, said, ‘look, mate. This isn’t a three way thing. You’re welcome to sit there and observe, but I ask the questions, and John answers them, and you just need to keep quiet okay?’
    He held up his arms and gave a very Gaelic shrug; his rubbery face contorted into a cross between Charles Aznavour and a koala bear. He then held a shaky  finger to his lips and sipped on his pint.
    John continued...
    ‘So basically, after that session which lasted, on and off, about a month, Paul and I kept up the contact.’
    ‘And what happened to Aust... Astrella?’
    ‘She’s just released a single. She’s also got a scathing article in the Daily Mail about Paul being a drug addled maniac who ruined her musical career. It’s just not true. The plain fact of the matter is, she’s just not very good. She’s the kind of person who would be the justification for bringing in the death penalty for karaoke. Paul split up with her a long time ago, and he cleaned himself up. He’s a good bloke.’
    ‘Hang on, ‘said the drunk, raising his arms in the manner of a man about to be sat on by an elephant. ‘Who’s this Astrella girl?’
    ‘She’s a public school whinging mincer,’ John said, with great satisfaction. ‘She’s a bitter ex who is taking a cheap shot at Paul to try and further her career. She’s nobody; just a girl who happens to be one of the daughters of Donovan and got married to one of the guys out of the Happy Mondays.’
    I asked, just out of interest, ‘what’s the other daughter called?’
    ‘Oriole, ‘ John replied.
    The drunk said , ‘that’s a stupid...’
    ‘Yes, we know,’ I said, ‘and you’re still talking. Look, I can’t concentrate if you keep butting in.’
    ‘Sorry!’ Up went the hands and down came the rubbery lips in the Gaelic pout again. ‘I’ll just sit here and watch you two…but I just wanted to ask, who are you?’
    He addressed this to John, who, replied politely, the boy from the Operatic Society shining through in adversity.
    ‘My name is John Pennington, and I am an engineer producer.’
    ‘And what have you engineered? I’m very musical m'self y’know. One of my uncles has got an accordion. I’ll tell you what I think...’
    ‘The Mock Turtles, The High, the Inspiral Carpets, the Happy Mondays, The Christians, Aztec Camera, the Housemartins, Moby… the list went on long enough for me to light up, and eat half of John's bag of barbecue ribs crisps while he wasn’t looking.
    When he finished, there was a pause; quite a long one, actually.
    Then the drunk said, ‘so… have you done anything I might have heard of?’
    ‘The theme tune from Brookside.’
    ‘Oh right! Nice one!’ the drunk enthused.
    Hang on a minute, I thought. Whose bloody interview is this? I took control again.
    ‘So John, how long is it since you did that stuff with Australia and Paul in Moonraker?’
    ‘About six years.’
    ‘And you now write with Paul Ryder?’
    ‘Yeah, simply put, I got a call from Paul asking what I was up to. Moby was taking a break from touring so I had some time on my hands. So, we thought, lets get together and we did. He’s got a place in France so I went over and it was great. Musically, everything just came together. Its good to be diverting my energies into creating music, instead of producing. We’ve done a couple of gigs already, but we’re keeping it low key for the moment. The album itself is finished. We did some remixes and a couple of re-edits a while ago, but apart from that it’s ready for the public and the record companies. I tell you, we have an album worth of killer tunes; a kind of Chemical Brothers meets Oasis meets The Who.
    ‘Will Paul be playing bass?’
    ‘No. We got him in the studio doing vocals but we still have those fat booming ‘Big Arm’ bass lines that were so much a part of his sound in the Mondays. Check it out and you’ll see what I mean. It’s being broadcast this Saturday on Revolution. They’ll play the whole album.’
    ‘Will you be on stage with the band when they start touring?
    ‘I might do some keyboards but mainly I’ll be doing front of house. I might even….’
    John stopped; halted by the ominous rumble coming from deep within the drunk.
    ‘Are you alright mate?’ John asked.
    ‘Yes; just a bit of wind. I’ll be fine in a minute.’
    He’d gone a funny colour. John looked at me and rolled his eyes, then looked back at the drunk and said, ‘well if its vomitus just make sure you’re not pointing this way. Shout timber or something and I’ll move out of the line of fire.’
    ‘Yeah, no problem, John,’ said the drunk. He got to his feet, suddenly, like a puppet that had suddenly had it’s strings yanked; as if Jim Henson had suddenly keeled over and hoisted one of his creations into the air with his last gasp. He staggered away toward the disabled toilet behind us. A knife appeared in his hand and he slipped it into the gap where the lock met the doorframe, slipped the lock, and then entered. The door closed behind him with a satisfying click.
    I looked at my notes, riffing through the pages, searching for the last of my questions.
    ‘Do you often find yourself working with the same people; like the Mondays, for example? You go back a long way with them in one form or another, like in the early days with Martin Hannett.’
    ‘Yeah, one thing about the music business is, it really brings home what a small world it is. You keep coming across people you worked with before. It’s good to have a history in a way. You move around a lot and so it’s the people more than a location, who end up being part of your landscape. Strawberry was very important as part of my development, but it’s the people I met there that made it so good. Though saying that, because of the nature of the business, there are a lot of faces missing from the table, like Martin (Hannett).

On the 18th of April, 1991, Martin Hannett died suddenly of a heart attack.

John: I couldn’t believe it. I was working with him on a session in a place called Great Linford Manor in Milton Keynes. It was a beautiful place to be, and I felt privileged to have been asked to work with Martin and The High. I’d been away for a while, working as a live engineer, so I was kind of out of that loop. To be invited back into the studio by Martin, and to do sessions for something that was going to be released was quite a tip of the hat. It was perfect, idyllic, doing a session with my mates really. At least, that’s how I thought it was going to be. I hadn’t seen Martin in a while and wasn’t aware of how much of a mess he was in.

He used to sit in the control room not drinking anything other than painkiller liquids. I had no idea what he was actually drinking other than the effect it had. It could have been methadone, anything…no idea. It just knocked him out. Martin would be slumped on the desk, snoring, sleeping like a baby. The sessions were more or less down to me, because we didn’t want to wake him, which is odd now I think of it. It just felt like, if he needs to sleep, leave him in peace. We were kind of protective of him in a way.

The desk we were using to record on, and Martin was using as a pillow, was one of the old Neve desks; it might have actually come out of Abbey Road, if I remember correctly. It didn’t have variable knobs on it so you could change between frequencies. It had switches which make so much noise when you used them, I just didn’t want to touch them. I left them as they were, just so I wouldn’t wake Martin. It wasn’t just me who felt that way either. John used to do his vocal in the control booth. He just liked to do it that way, but he sang really quietly; it struck me at the time that it was almost like a lullaby.

On a professional level I was aware that the sessions at that point were so…in essence, flawed, because Martin was losing his grasp of reality. He had other things going on in his mind when he was awake.

Geetan: You paint quite a poignant scene. It must have been hard, seeing your friend and mentor like that, especially with that being the last time you actually saw him alive. What were your last words to him?

John:  'I can’t believe you got Laurence to mix another one of my tracks you fucker! I’m getting the train home to Manchester'

Geetan: Pardon?

John: eh… yeah. I know. I wish I’d said something different in retrospect. As last words go, I guess you could say it’s my version of Captain Oates saying, ‘I may be gone some time.’ Only in this case, I stayed around and it was Martin who disappeared into the unknown. Two weeks later, he was dead.’

Geetan: Why did you say what you did?

John: Well, when Martin called me in to work with him, he didn’t tell me he was getting somebody else in to actually mix the tracks. It was quite a knock back for, because he only told me when we got to the mix stage itself. It was a real kick in the balls. He brought in a guy called Laurence Diana who had mixed the Bummed album. He just liked the way the guy mixed the things that I had recorded. Possibly because Laurence did everything that Martin said, and I didn’t. I had outgrown my teacher I guess, and I think Martin knew it; not that I was any better, but I had my own ideas and experience. At the time I saw it as Martin giving me a slap about the head for being cocky but I wasn’t. I just wanted to see it through to the end and was really pissed off after putting so much passion into what I did and then getting shafted at the last minute. It was like bringing up a child and getting to the point where it graduates and then you're not invited to the graduation. I should have known, because I knew how Martin worked. I’d known him for a long time. Martin liked to be in control. That was his way of doing things, and he could control Laurence but not me. Maybe I should have seen it coming but I didn’t.

Geetan: What did you feel like when you heard the news of his death?

For the first time in the interview John was lost for words. Silence settled. It became uncomfortable. Then he spoke, back in the moment, shaking his head slowly as he remembered.

John: Man. I felt lost. Felt like I’d lost something that was so important to me. I felt like there was more to give, there was more in the partnership… felt like the end of an era in a way, a kind of musical stave in the coffin of our relationship. The man had so much more to give…sure he was difficult to work with at times, but he had a passion and I understood that. I’m passionate about music myself, and he was a friend, at the end of the day. I just felt If he had have survived another ten years he would have had a musical resurrection; something great and good and groundbreaking. I really had faith in him; a lot of trust, and I guess that’s why the last session ended as it did. I felt let down but now…I understand why he did what he did. I just wish I could sit down with him and have a pint and say, ‘no harm done, mate, and then get back into a studio with him. But Martin's candle had been made too short, really. And because he was using the candle to burn smack he just ruined it for himself…for everybody really. Not just the bands who he could have pulled out of obscurity, but everybody who wanted more of his music because he was a genius and he knew it.

Geetan: Was that part of the problem?

John: Possibly… yeah…there was some frustration. He knew he’d fucked something up. He'd got into drugs but he couldn’t get out. He'd bought into the musical triangle of sex drugs and rock and roll, and he couldn’t turn back.

John shook his head; took out a cigarette, but didn’t light up. He looked thoughtful for a moment, tapping the filter tip on the table top.

‘The funny thing is,’ he said, ‘the memory of him I hold closest to me actually has nothing to do with the music. It was my twenty first birthday party, and Martin came along with his wife, Wendy. He came up to me and shook my hand, a real coming of age kind of thing. But what he did was something so simple, but it meant so much to me. He didn’t just shake my hand, like a friendly greeting between mates. He turned it into that brother thing, and placed his hands overhand over mine, and lifted it up. We were brothers in a musical art form, and it was at that point, that I felt like I had become part of it. And it was Martin who welcomed me in. I looked him in the eye and was blown away with the thought of how far I’d come and the people I had the privilege of knowing. Like Martin, the man who was so lost in his own creative genius.
    I sighed. ‘Quite a sad story really.’
    ‘Yeah, I guess so. But there were a lot of good times. Martin had a wicked sense of humour. And if what they say about heaven having a great band up there, what with Kurt Cobain, Elvis and Hendrix, then they've also got a great producer to get it all down on tape.’
    John smiled a soft smile and sat in silence.
    Then we heard a tapping noise.
    For a moment I wondered if…?
    A voice, somehow faraway, faint, but familiar.
    ‘Can you hear me?’
    I looked at John, quizzically.
    He pointed over my shoulder to the door of the toilet.
    The drunk asked, ‘is there anybody out there?’
    John laughed, flicked his ash into the ashtray, and said, ‘I’d like to think so…’