Tobias Partington - May, 2024.

Talking Heads’ Remain in Light, AC/DC’s Back in Black and Grace Jones’ Warm Leatherette were all recorded at Compass Point Studios in 1980. Can their sound be credited to the studio itself, or are there other factors involved?

It’s obviously a given that band members and session musicians impact an album’s sound since they’ve written or played the music but the producers and engineers from each of these impacted their final sound more than Compass Point itself, did. When producer and Island Records owner Chris Blackwell constructed Compass Point studios in 1977, his idea was to bring artists there who had “no connection to the Caribbean” and have them interact with local music and the general surroundings. Blackwell stated that Compass Point’s nearby capital, Nassau, lacks character, and credits this with the “high ratio of original records” produced there, unlike major cities such as London or Kingston.

With a main control room based on that of London’s Basing Street Studios (also owned by Blackwell), it was quite unremarkable in terms of technology. AC/DC’s engineer Tony Platt says it had an MCI console (48-channel) and MCI tape machine (24-track), but there isn’t much information beyond this – and control rooms would change setups consistently, regardless of what it was being used for.

Location aside, producers and engineers had more sonic impact than anything else. Grace Jones’ Warm Leatherette was produced by the person who founded the studio, and therefore is the only one, in my opinion, which includes this sonic signature. This can be owed to Chris Blackwell, engineer Alex Sadkin, and their formulation of the Compass Point All-Stars.

Following the poor reception of Grace Jones’ third album Muse (1979), Blackwell and Sadkin brought her to Compass Point in 1980 – the band was formed for the purpose of playing on her next studio album, Warm Leatherette. The All-Stars featured famous rhythm duo Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare (of Black Uhuru), and Blackwell pointed toward their recent album Sinsemilla as a reference to what “the Grace Jones sound” would be.

Because of Jones’ reputation as a Disco singer, Sly & Robbie’s ties to Reggae, and  the rest of the band’s own connections to rock, pop and more (notably, Barry Reynolds, Wally Badarou and Uziah “Sticky” Thompson), nobody knew what to expect, aside from Blackwell, since he orchestrated it.

Most of Warm Leatherette consisted of cover songs from the likes of Roxy Music, The Pretenders, and more. Feelings were tense to begin with, but a “mutual respect was definitely established” early on, after laying down the tracks for the first songs. The band powered through each track in around two takes, largely due to the skill of Sly & Robbie, and this speedy process resulted in enough material to comprise two albums (in just ten days, including overdubs).

From these sessions, Warm Leatherette was released first, followed by Jones’ next album, Nightclubbing, the next year. The All-Stars simply recorded each jam session, rather than “wasting time” wondering what to play. Badarou thinks “nobody else” took as much responsibility as Blackwell. Although Jones’ records were undoubtedly her own, he was largely responsible for the production of the entire thing. He was in recording sessions, checked takes with the band, and spent lots of time in the control room alongside Sadkin.

His idea meant blending Sly & Robbie’s Reggae rhythm section with “edgier” punk music, which is why he intionally covered The Normal’s original Warm Leatherette, recognising that Post-Punk was taking over Disco by means of popularity. His routine of bringing cassette tapes of potential songs into the studio showed that the creative direction was ultimately his. If they hadn’t gotten the gist of a track after the third or fourth attempt, they would simply move onto another one.

A lack of total recall functions on mixing consoles at the time, meant Alex Sadkin’s approach was to mix as he went along, since they couldn’t easily be saved to desks. Badarou felt this technique benefitted the tracks and resulted in a better and more balanced final mix, without being overproduced, which he claims has influenced the rest of his career, since. Sly Dunbar praised his ability to “perfectly” balance the songs, even when playing live, stating he was meticulous about recording, spending up to four hours at a time setting up Dunbar’s drum kit.

The main argument for Compass Point’s ‘sonic signature’, if it has one, is down to its secluded location, allowing artists to focus entirely on recording. The blend of genres inspired by Grace Jones, Blackwell and the All-Stars’ prior backgrounds in Reggae and Rock, as well as Sadkin’s ability to meticulously record and mix the sessions in short time, are more important. Location, the band’s formation and the creative direction were all decisions made primarily by Chris Blackwell.

Following the death of lead singer Bon Scott early in 1980, AC/DC established Brian Johnson as a replacement. Johnson had a successful audition, and soon joined the band at Compass Point to record Back in Black. Sessions began in April, 1980, and the band were joined by Robert “Mutt” Lange (producer of Def Leppard and ZZ Top), in addition to engineer Tony Platt.

Lange wrote most of the lyrics, and was largely responsible for the entire production. He recorded most of the band at once, making it sound like a live performance before adding vocals. Meticulous methods and an “almost OCD” approach to production can be credited for his influence, regardless of the tension it brought between him and the band. He himself admitted they thought he was a “merciless tyrant” obsessed with perfection, but never cared about being liked.

Tony Platt’s prior experience on Highway to Hell may have given him some knowledge on how to work with them. He arguably did a lot of the leg work in terms of recording, and his considerable amount of comping for the vocals was learned from Lange, showing his influence on Platt as an engineer, and subsequently the whole album. Additionally, It is Platt’s own assertion that “all musicians perform best if you can create an environment that they feel most comfortable in.” This philosophy marks his contribution in, not only recording the material, but helping the band perform better.

Platt and Lange’s decision to mix and master the album at New York’s Electric Lady/Masterdisk studios, respectively, can be attributed to their preference of the consoles and monitors there. Platt would also mix as he went along, adhered to the band’s likes and dislikes, and even recorded the 2000-pound bronze bell featured on the album, pointing towards a heavy influence from production staff and a suggestion of mediocrity in terms of Compass Point’s technology. While we can acknowledge that Compass Point’s quiet location increased productivity, it is evident that those directly involved in the album contributed more than the studio’s technology did.

By the time they began sessions for their fourth studio album Remain in Light in early 1980, Talking Heads had already worked at Compass Point before, on their second album More Songs About Buildings and Food. A hiatus was taking place, each band member occupied by their own respective projects. Jerry Harrison produced an album by soul singer Nona Hendryx. David Byrne and producer Brian Eno had collaborated on a solo album. And the rhythm section of Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth were holidaying in the Caribbean, questioning their own relationship with the band and each other. Frantz and Weymouth brought this brief impasse to a close after buying an apartment above Compass Point, with Byrne, Eno and Harrison joining shortly thereafter.

Fear of Music’s first track, I Zimbra, was arguably a starting point in terms of creative direction. They entered the studio with no set material to record, instead jamming to afrobeat rhythms inspired by Fela Kuti, and looping them. Chris Frantz says it was written as they recorded it, and mostly improvised, the first of their discography to feature this method.

The lyrics for the whole album were consulted on, due to a band-wide bout of writer’s block, beginning with Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On). Brian Eno influenced these sessions with his songwriting participation and creative direction, writing the melody for Once in a Lifetime, introducing Byrne to Fela Kuti in the first place, and tackling his writing block by writing the backing vocals (due to the nature of songs, inspired partly by preachy radio evangelists, Byrne only had to ‘answer’ those sermon-like lyrics in order to write the rest).

Jerry Harrison would play a section (keyboards or guitar) for “four or five minutes”, then somebody else would do the same, and so the album was built this way. King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew and singer Nona Hendryx recorded their overdubs in different studios, taking very minimal time and yet their presence is very obvious on the album, something Belew credits Eno for. Compass Point did not have a huge impact on Remain in Light’s sound.

It should come as no surprise by now that this, too, was mixed and mastered outside of Compass Point, by the joint efforts of Eno, Harrison, Byrne, and a number of other producers and engineers. Eno had a huge contribution to Remain in Light. Drawing similarities to Warm Leatherette and Back in Black, it is, of course, still a Talking Heads record, but the scale of which Eno and other engineers (such as John Potoker, Rhett Davis, Jack Nuber and Stephen Stanley) took part in its production cannot go unacknowledged (not to mention trumpeter Jon Hassell).

To conclude, Compass Point did have a sonic signature, which lay in the sound of the All-Stars, and the musical direction of Blackwell and Sadkin. Warm Leatherette, for this reason, is the only one of the three albums that incorporated this. As a result, the only part of the Compass Point sound that can be attributed to characteristics of the studio itself is its extremely remote location. While there are definitely comparisons to be drawn between the approaches of recording these three albums, I struggle to believe that location alone, as well as state of the art, but still fairly unimpressive, studio technology, are majorly responsible.