With the current trend of bands returning to releasing vinyl records, I’ve cast my mind back to 1990 and the making of Pieces of Gold.
I recorded & mixed four tracks in my studio at Warp Farm throughout January and February and then put them out on a cassette to see which two tracks would be the best for a single. Once everyone had chipped in with their thoughts we decided on Mandy is Missing and Pieces of Gold.
In June, I went down to Abbey Road studios in London to finish the mastering and cut the master lacquer. At the time Mandy is Missing was slated for the A-side and Pieces of Gold for the B-side. I went down to observe and was very impressed by how much they were able to do. The mastering engineer had just finished working on MC Hammer’s latest single.
My songs were both over 4 mins 20 secs and therefore getting a bit on the long side. This meant that we couldn’t have the bass as “deep” as we would have liked. The options were: edit it down to 3 and a half mins, release it on 12 inch or leave it alone. We left it alone and I was still overjoyed at the end result.
When we passed around the test copy it soon became apparent that Pieces was going to be more instantly popular than Mandy. So, we put it out as a double A under our band name 1159. This set off a sequence of events. Firstly we got some good reviews in the music press which then got 5 record labels asking to meet up with us and the chance of a major deal. Secondly, we got a letter from another band called 1159 threatening legal action if we continued to use the name. This led to me having to get the singles re-stickered that had already been manufactured. It was at this point I decided that I would always put stuff out under my own name since it is my belief that you can’t sue someone for using their own name.
Stuart
Below is the video of the new recording of “Pieces of Gold”, March 2018.