I was reading recently in Prog magazine about Steve Wilson re-mixing Gentle Giant's LP's, and that he had to do it from the 2-track tapes because of the 'unavailability' of the original multi-track master tapes.
This reminded me of the reason for that 'unavailability' and the part that I played in it.
In the early '80's my friend and keyboard player in our band was the engineer at Advision Studios, and we were recording tracks there for our album under the name of Tea.
One day he asked me to come into the studio to lend him moral and physical support in undertaking a task which had been given to him by the management.
It turned out that Advision were going to dispose of their old and now unused Scully 8-track machine, and had told him to destroy the dozens of reel to reel masters that were recorded on it.
Like me, he was a massive fan of Gentle Giant - and among those tapes were the original recordings of our favourite albums, Music In A Glasshouse, The Power And The Glory, Free Hand etc. etc.
He didn't feel up to doing this on his own, so he roped me in to help out.
There were, as far as I can remember, 40 - 50 masters, and my first reaction on seeing the ones fro GG was to suggest that we might save them from destruction, but he said that that was more than his job was worth.
So we spent many hours during the night listening to a selection of the masters in detail for one very last time, especially what we thought were the best ones.
And then we set to work with razor blades.
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Gentle Giant Missing 8-Track master Tapes
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. Reincarnation as a tapeworm seems appropriate.
