John Leckie

Iain McNay's career interview with John Leckie for Cherry Red starts at the beginning rather than with the famous records.

Leckie came out of a film and television course having written his college thesis on electronic music, which in 1967 meant going round record shops taking notes on Stockhausen because there was nowhere else to learn it. Six months at a film company convinced him he was not going to be a director, so he wrote to every studio in London, of which there were then very few and all tied to record companies. Abbey Road gave him an interview and a job.

Being a tape operator, a job that no longer exists, was not making tea. It meant sitting at the back of the room, away from the action, as the only person who touched the tape, and so having to learn the song, work out who in the room was actually giving the orders, and stay one step ahead of what was about to be asked for.

He moved up to engineer within a few years, and remembers a week on Wings sessions where Paul McCartney controlled everything from the mixer without ever touching it, encouraging rather than operating.