In the Studio
Danton Supple
DANTON SUPPLE
Be it his work with U2, Coldplay, Morrissey, Starsailor, Ed Harcourt, or something completely different, the one constant has always been keeping things real, and fresh. There are no ‘rules’ to this music production game, Danton Supple tells Headliner, and the more diverse your day to day studio work is, the more rewarding it will become.
Today, Danton Supple flits between Strongroom Studios in Shoreditch and Beethoven Street Studios in Queens Park, the latter of which is one of those classic facilities that survived the studio crash. “I do far more at Beethoven Street than I anticipated; it’s one that has lasted as a building, as opposed to everyone else disappearing. Studios have literally been decimated, haven’t they?,” opens Supple. He has a point. It was at SARM where the Grammy-nominated producer trained during the ‘80s, alongside Trevor Horn - a legendary studio which, inevitably, is being turned into apartments. I ask Supple about his journey in. “I had no plans of coming into music, but I went out with a girl whose uncle worked for the BBC radiophonic workshop, and he had studios in Hammersmith; I went to see the place, and he was writing theme tunes for Doctor Who and The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” Supple recalls. “But the concept of studios was a new world for me, and here I was in a place full of technology and music... And the lifestyle appealed! I was very aware
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of production without being aware of what it was at the time, so I looked into that, and in those days, there was one course you could do at college – Tonmeister – but I didn’t have grade 8 in music, although I had the physics and the maths, so I looked into finding out ways to get a job somewhere in a studio and work my way up.” Supple was soon taken on by Strongroom, and during this period, was introduced to a producer from SARM: “It was 1986, I think, right at the start [of my career] - and one of Trevor’s guys had come to that studio and said SARM was the place to go; it was pioneering, and had so many hits coming out of it; it also had a huge budget for technology.” That was Supple’s launchpad for four years of audio training, and he never looked back. “I then went to Westside Studios with Alan [Winstanley] and Clive [Langer], engineering those sessions, which was really great training, as I was doing loads of drum kits, day in, day out,” he says. “If you could record bands well, you could work. I’d done dance music at
SARM for three years, and then moving onto acoustic instruments fused nicely as experience for me when I was to go freelance.” Supple feels very fortunate to have worked with such a diverse range of producers as well as artists (Brian Eno and Steve Lillywhite being just two more legends that ease into that category). “It’s definitely helped me get to where I am today – and I am so glad not to be stuck working in one genre, because a lot of the time, I love the diversity,” Supple explains. “Over the last 30 years, it’s been a mix of guitars, American folk, and full-on female pop, so that diversity keeps me as interested as I was, all those years ago.” I ask Supple if he still gets involved in any projects as engineer – apparently only once in the last 20 years, with the notorious mad genius that is Phil Spector. And what an experience that was..! “They wanted someone with experience, and I’d seemed to get a name for dealing with awkward bands by this point, which is perhaps why the Phil thing came up,” Supple smiles.
