by steve on Sat Feb 13, 2010 1:18 am
I met Iain when Jeff Pezzati brought me to his house in maybe 1982. Jeff had just finished the first sessions with Iain for Naked Raygun's masterpiece Throb Throb, and he was singing Iain's praises to everybody. I gave Iain a copy of Big Black's first record, and he put it on immediately and listened with enthusiasm. Minutes later we made plans to start working on Big Black's next record, and from then on Iain and I were comrades in the fight to get our generation's best bands on tape. Iain's fight ended on Thursday, but that I am still in it I owe to him in no small part.
I learned a lot from Iain. His enthusiasm was both infectious and boundless, and he was generous with his knowledge and experience. He became a kind of utility sound man for every cool band who met him, and he would drop everything in order to help a band out, whether that meant mixing for them at the last minute, strapping in for an all-night recording session or building a makeshift control room in the basement of a bar. Iain respected bands as comrades and saw himself as their ally, and it isn't overstating it to say he instantly became a friend and fan of every band he worked with.
Iain's social circle was pretty much all musicians, and while musicians like to enjoy themselves, in the fun sweepstakes, Iain may have taken more tickets than anybody. He was always up for a late night out, and he had a friendly bartender as facilitator in every bar he visited. One of his evenings out would profoundly change my life.
Riflesport were in town from Minneapolis with a night off, crashing at my apartment in Rogers Park, and Iain and Chris Johnson had decided to meet up and paint the town red. I accompanied them both to act as wingman and because I suspected things woud get interesting. The first stop was the upstairs bar at the Metro, where Iain had been holding court with a hairdresser/bartender on whom he had designs of some kind. When Riflesport got there, The hairdresser suggested that Iain and Chris have a martini contest. Both men were championship drinkers and took to this idea with enthusiasm. They would lay back with their heads on the bar, mouths open skyward and the hairdresser would pour gin into their mouths from bottles in either hand. The first person to sit up and swallow "lost" that round.
I don't know if a winner was ever established, but the contest was titanic. Again and again their heads klonked onto the bar, the booze poured in, and again and again they would gag and squirm and one of them would ultimately sit up, gin nashing out of his mouth as he choked it down while the other let it well up, ultimately pouring out and into his ears and nostrils... It was something.
Predictably, both were ruined by their efforts and needed to be taken home to sleep. The rest of Riflesport wrangled Chris into Pete's van, but Iain was in a pickle. He had recently acquired both a house on the Northwest Side and a slightly-dilapidated Volvo sports car, but he was in no shape to drive so I volunteered to drive him home. I was being followed by the Riflesports, who were struggling to maintain control of our other champion, engaged in impromptu intra-van wrestling. Iain complicated things by being unable to stay awake long enough to give me directions to his new home, so I drove in ever-widening circles once I got to his approximate neighborhood.
On a neighboring street, I noticed a little bungalow for sale by its owner, and stopped just long enough to jot down the number. Eventually we found Iain's street and then his house and then his front door, and ultimately got him inside and onto his couch unharmed. The next day I called the number for the house, and within a month I owned the bungalow at 3846 N. Francisco, where I would build a recording studio and begin what amounts to a career as a studio owner and engineer.
Iain told me some years later that I was the only person he ever allowed to drive that car, which flattered me, despite the circumstances.
So that's one story, but it's hardly the whole story.
As an engineer, Iain was an indispensable ally. He was a genius at convincing studio owners to let him have down time at bargain rates, and he built a client base of frugal (and demanding) bands. He worked for years at Chicago Recording Company, a slick downtown studio complex spread out over three buildings on Rush and Ohio streets. During business hours, CRC did jingles, voiceovers and occasional music sessions for $250 and hour. With overtime or rush charges, that would sometimes bump up to $500 an hour, and business was good. Since the ad agencies didn't work weekends, the studios sat empty from Friday at dusk to Monday morning. Iain convinced Alan Kubicka, the studio owner, that he could make an extra $500 every week if he could book those weekends for a flat rate, and amazingly Alan went for it. This ushered in the era of Iain being swamped with work, booked every weekend making another record, strapped in from 5pm Friday around the clock until they unlocked the place Monday morning. He must have made dozens of records that way.
While I take pride in Electrical Audio being a relative bargain, I can't help being humbled by the price/performance ratio Iain was able to establish as a standard during his tenure at CRC. And as incredible as that deal was, it wasn't his best deal.
In the mid 1980s, Evanston was home to a world class studio built into an old Pierce-Arrow car yard that hosted a few big name sessions by bands like Cheap Trick, the Police and a few others. The studio was beautiful and had a marble live room, giant Neve console, Ampex tape machines, gorgeous Neumann tube mics and an attached hotel with billiard room, projection TV and a showcase room complete with stage, cocktail tables and a full PA system.
Though elaborate, this studio was essentially a hobby horse for a cokehead who had inherited a wedge of money and never developed a steady clientele. Dude shot through the money, and as the creditors began to circle, he struck a deal with Iain: Get me $100 a day in cash (dealers only take cash) and fuck it you can have the run of the place. Iain booked it for $200 a day, kept $100 for himself and strapped in for a train of red-eyed overnight cheapskate punk sessions. For a period of about three weeks, every punk band in Chicago made a record at this incredible studio. Iain didn't get to sleep unless it rained. When it rained, the roof leaked into the control room, so everything had to be powered-down.
At the salvage auction to pay the creditors, a prominent west coast studio owner bought the entire studio in order to get the console and tape machines, and essentially abandoned the building.
When he eventually tired of traveling, Iain formed a brilliant idea. He and his similarly-inclined roommate Peter Deimel would find a French farmhouse and build a studio in its barn, stocking the studio with castoff equipment from CRC. It would cost them very little and would allow CRC's owner Alan to take vacations in France and write them off. Iain plucked all the equipment from the storage areas, including a beautiful 1969 Flickinger console, packed it all into a shipping container along with his furniture and his Volvo and set sail for France.
Black Box, the studio they built, Iain and Peter, is magical. Set in a peaceful plot next to an apple orchard and a stand of oaks, with a pond full of ducks and goldfish, Black Box is the perfect realization of a residential studio. The rough interior surfaces of the barn give it lively acoustics, the equipment and maintenance are immaculate, and both Iain and Peter were tireless in helping bands get on with their mojo. And the desk! Incredible! The best sounding desk I have ever used. If I had to make every record on it, I would be content.
Iain lived three lives worth of experience, including traveling the world as a sound man for dozens of bands including the English band Mega City Four and the French hard rock band Parabellum. Somewhere along the way he had a daughter and wife, but I never met them. I know he started life an Englishman, but his accent was only pronounced when he was drinking or around cute girls, so you might never know it. He ended up speaking French and it suited him.
So Iain did basically everything he wanted to. He made all the records, rocked all the houses, loved all the women and traveled everywhere until he settled down on a beautiful spot and made it more beautiful. He made records better than the bands on them for almost nothing. He drank wine and ate and laughed and talked loud and was loved. I suspect that Iain knew what an impact he had on everyone he worked with, and I hope he allowed himself to be content on the way out.
Rest easy Iain Burgess, you were a great man and you did a lot.
steve albini
Electrical Audio
sa at electrical dot com
Quicumque quattuor feles possidet insanus est.
