KEN SCOTT
ANDY JONES
© Jennifer Harnsberger
At 16 years of age Ken Scott knew two things: he was fed up with being at school and he loved recording. He made a decision there and then to follow his heart, little knowing where this decision would lead…
“I wrote letters to various studios on a Friday,” he recalls, “mailed them out on the Saturday, heard back from one on the Tuesday, had the interview the next day and on the Friday I was told they wanted me to start the following Monday so I left school that day. In nine days my world changed and I started working at Abbey Road, what became the most famous recording studio in the world.”
If you think that’s impressive, within a few years Scott was engineering on Beatles sessions. “I guess I was lucky that [engineer] Geoff [Emerick] walked out of some sessions,” he laughs. “I got thrown in at the deep end quickly!” The deep end included the singles Hey Jude and Lady Madonna as well as the Magical Mystery Tour album. Scott then moved to Trident Studios where he worked on several LPs including Bowie’s The Man Who Sold The World with producer Tony Visconti.
“I engineered two albums with David and thought he was a sweetheart kind of a guy,” Scott says. “He obviously had a certain amount of talent but I never saw him being a huge superstar. He was in producing something that was eventually issued under the name of Arnold Corns and because I’d engineered with him in the past I was put on some of the sessions at Trident. During a tea break I mentioned how I was getting frustrated just engineering and wanted to move into production. He said that he’d just signed a new management deal to put him in the studio to record an album and then shop a deal.”