Windmill Lane Recording Studios

WINDMILL LANE RECORDING STUDIOS

First published 2026 by The O’Brien Press Ltd, 12 Terenure Road East, Rathgar, Dublin 6, D06 HD27, Ireland.

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PICTURE CREDITS Naoise Culhane: pages 6 and 41; Alamy, Carol Lee: page 15; Sam Jones: pages 16-17; Shaun Davey: pages 24 (bottom), 26, 51 and 120; BP Fallon: page 19; Alamy: pages 20, 29 (bottom) and 116; Windmill Lane: pages 21 (right), 27, 33 (top), 37 (left), 40, 52, 83 (bottom), 113, 117 (top), 122 (both), 123 (all except group photo), 127 (top), 128, 131, 132, 135, 136, 137, 139 (bottom), 140 and 141 (bottom); Conor Horgan: pages 23 and 67; Alamy, Pictorial Press: pages 30, 111 and 119; Alamy, Mirrorpix: page 34; Maurice Linnane: pages 37 (right), 115 and 143; Alamy, Stephen Power: page 39; Ian Finlay: pages 43 and 45; Adrian Boot: page 49; Universal Music Group: pages 50, 88 (both) and 126 (both); Garda Joan Hogan: page 53; Alamy, kpa: page 55; Alamy, Anne-Marie Forker: page 56; Alamy, Radharc Images: page 59; Anne O’Connor: pages 62, 68, 86, 87 (both) and 89; Alamy, The Photolibrary Wales: page 65; Anthony Woods: page 68 (bottom); Terry Cromer: pages 73 and 74; Basil Al-Rawi: page 76; Nestor Romero Clemente: pages 77, 92 and 93; Alamy, RGR Collection: page 79; Ben Dartnell: page 80; Amelia Stein: page 85; Alamy, SilverScreen: page 91; Sportsfile: pages 95 and 98–99; Julian Lloyd, Bridgeman Images: pages 96, 100 and 105; Tristan Hutchinson: page 107; Lois Crighton: page 108; Jamie Candiloro: page 112; Michael O’Brien: page 123 (group photo); Richard Stannard: page 125; Rubén Espadas Trejo: page 127 (bottom); Aidan Alcock: page 139 (top); David Moore: page 141 (top).

Every reasonable effort has been made to trace all copyright holders. Any omissions are unintentional and regretted. The publisher will be happy to hear from any copyright holders not acknowledged and undertakes to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions.

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WINDMILL LANE RECORDING STUDIOS

TH E S E S S IO N S , TH E STO R I E S , TH E SOU N DS TON Y C L AY TON - LE A & M A RK CUNNINGH A M

CONTENTS FO REWOR D

MICHAEL D HIGGINS

06

01.

‘LET’S AIM HIGH’

08

0 2.

U2

14

03.

HOW DO YOU START A STUDIO?

22

04 .

BILL WHELAN

28

0 5.

PAUL BRADY

36

0 6.

DÓNAL LUNNY

38

07.

HORSLIPS

42

08.

SHAY HENNESSY

46

0 9.

STEVE LILLYWHITE

48

1 0.

CLANNAD

54

11.

GROWTH AND GREATNESS

60

1 2.

MIDGE URE – ULTRAVOX AND THE CHIEFTAINS

64

1 3.

PEOPLE AND MUSIC

66

14 .

THE MOVE TO RINGSEND

72

1 5.

THE COMMITMENTS

78

1 6.

THE CORRS

82

1 7.

THE CRANBERRIES

84

1 8.

FILM SCORES

90

1 9.

THE ROLLING STONES

94

20.

WORKING AT WINDMILL

102

21 .

SOME OTHER MEMORABLE ARTISTS AT WINDMILL LANE

106

22.

REM

110

23.

FIACHRA TRENCH

114

24 .

OTHER NOTABLE ARTISTS

118

25.

BIFF STANNARD

124

26.

THE SCRIPT

130

27.

THE MANTLE PASSES

134

28 .

BUILT TO LAST

138

FOREWORD

Above: President Michael D Higgins attending the opening of the Visitor Experience launch at Windmill Lane.

L-R: Sabina Higgins, Paul Brady, Donal Lunny, Aidan Alcock, Michael D Higgins, Tony Perrey, Brian Masterson, Naomi Moore, Fiachna Ó Braonáin, CEO of Bord Fáilte Paul Kelly.

I am deeply aware of the profound impact that Windmill Lane Recording Studios has had, not only on the musical landscape of our nation but also on the global stage, as one of the world’s most renowned recording studios.

First opened by Brian Masterson and James Morris in 1978 in its original location in Windmill Lane in the Dublin Docklands, subsequently relocating in 1990 to its current location at Ringsend Road, Windmill Lane has long borne witness to the harmonious convergence of talent and innovation, serving as a crucible for creativity and a beacon of artistic excellence for over forty-five years.

Over the course of its distinguished history, the studios have been a catalyst for countless musical journeys, a laboratory of sonic experimentation that has created timeless masterpieces by so many illustrious artists, including The Rolling Stones, The Cranberries, U2, Kate Bush and, more recently, Ed Sheeran, Westlife, The Script and Hozier.

I had the privilege of attending the launch of the studios’ visitor experience in 2020, when the recording studios opened their famous green doors to the public for the first time. This marked a new chapter in Windmill Lane’s legacy, inviting music lovers from around the world to step into the hallowed halls where history was made and to immerse themselves in the magic of the recording process.

So many of the albums that we have grown up with, and the songs that our children and grandchildren are growing up with, were recorded in Windmill Lane. It is a very special experience to learn how, and stand where, they were recorded, a testament to the enduring legacy of Windmill Lane and the impact that it continues to have on the cultural landscape of Ireland, shaping the soundtracks of our lives in ways both profound and enduring.

This journey also reminds us of the intrinsic value of music and the arts in shaping our collective consciousness and enriching our lives. In a world that is too easily commodified, the arts, and particularly music, are the harmonious expression of the human spirit, serving as timeless threads that weave together the fabric of our society. Their practice transcends boundaries of language, culture and ideology, forging connections among people of all backgrounds, or distanced in generations.

May I thank Aidan Alcock, Naomi Moore, Tony Perrey and all those involved in this worthy book for this journey through time and sound, one that serves as a tribute to the enduring mark that Windmill Lane has left on the world of music and as a celebration of the creativity and artistry that continues to thrive within its walls. It is one that I hope will inspire us to cherish and support the arts in all its forms. For in doing so, we honour not only our past, but also cultivate a richer, more harmonious future for generations to come.

Beir beannacht, Michael D Higgins Uachtarán na hÉireann/President of Ireland 2011–2025

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‘ LET’S AIM HIGH’ Brian Masterson: The music scene in the ’70s in Dublin was pretty vibrant, but not in a way that would be recognised nowadays. It was much more casual and unstructured, but there were lots of interesting little clubs and pubs. There was a pub called Toners, which is still there on Baggot Street, but upstairs in Toners was a cool place. Earlier in the ’70s, I played in a band. We were a college band, and we played in Trinity (College Dublin) and UCD (University College Dublin), Queen’s in Belfast and so on. There was a lot of folk music too; the folk scene was good, and Eilish Moore, Christy Moore’s sister, ran the lovely Universal Folk Club. So yeah, it was a vibrant time.

At the time I set up Windmill, I had been working freelance. I’d been working in a place called Lombard Studios. When it first opened, it was called Miracle Studio.

In the first few days it opened, somebody wrote a sign on the door that said, ‘It would be a miracle if it works.’ The owners

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changed it to Lombard very quickly! I worked on many great albums there, but before that, I was a bass player. I was always interested in recording, and even when I played in the band, we did our own demos that I would record. Then other bands started asking me if I would do demos for them.

At that point, I lived in a little cottage in Glencree, County Wicklow. There was a nice big room there, and the area was lovely and quiet, so people would come down for a weekend and I’d record them. Strictly straight to two-track, which was a very good learning experience.

I was very good friends with Shaun Davey, the composer, and had played bass with him for a little while. Another guy who had been in a band with Shaun, and who also played bass, was James Morris. James had a very successful film editing business, based close to Merrion Square. It was an advertising commercials business, and that was the bread and butter for himself and Russ Russell.

James wanted to expand; he could see that most stuff would soon be edited on video rather than film. He wanted to get into that, so he looked around for premises. He found this beautiful old granary-type warehouse down off the quays in Windmill Lane, and then thought, hold on, I wonder if we could make something really big and really good here?

He and I talked and talked, and decided that, as we were both so much into music, why don’t we build a great studio?

The rest is history.

In the ’70s, there were no such things as recording schools or colleges, although there may have been one or two in America. Generally speaking, it was an apprenticeship system. I didn’t do an apprenticeship; instead, I jumped straight in. That said, I had done electronics in DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology), so I had the technical background. I played music and was very involved in playing music, so I had that side of it, too. I just learned as Below: Brian Masterson and James Morris in Studio One.

I went along, and was hopefully very successful in what I managed to put together.

STUDIO DESIGN The most important decision I made in putting together Windmill Lane in 1978 was the choice of architect. That shaped how the whole place was and how it was laid out.

There was nobody in Ireland at the time who was designing recording studios, so the obvious place to look was the UK. I went over there, but – no offence to many of the great studio designers over there – I never felt there was enough pizzazz to the designs. I mean, of course, the studios were good, but I felt their designs were a bit ordinary.

I thought I’d look elsewhere, and being an avid Jimi Hendrix fan, I had heard that a guy called John Storyk had designed Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios in New York in 1968; it was one of the only artist-owned recording studios in existence. So I thought, well, let’s go to New York, meet John Storyk and see if he would like to design a studio in Dublin.

‘ L et 's A im H igh’

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I got to see him at Electric Lady, and we went through the whole thing. I stayed in his apartment in New York for about four or five days. I got to know him, we talked and talked, and I left there knowing I’d found the person that I wanted to design Windmill Lane.

John just thought about Windmill Lane differently. He thought about it as spaces that would encourage creativity, spaces that would make you want to play and make you want to perform. I’m so glad that’s what I did, because what he designed for us was superb.

Now, in terms of Windmill, the video side of the business had to give up half of the second floor of the building, because John said, ‘Oh, you can’t have a studio that’s all low-level. It’s wrong, the sound has to open out. People have to feel free to play and get great big drum sounds and stuff like that.’ So that’s what we did. We took away half of the second floor, and we got a fantastic room. Those are the things that last.

‘ YOU GET ONE CHANCE IN A LIFETIME. LET’S AIM HIGH.’

STUDIO ONE There’s a little story behind the equipment in the original Studio One in Windmill Lane. SSL (Solid State Logic) was founded in 1969, so I don’t know if their first production model was even on the market. It didn’t have a reputation yet, and it was, sort of, an untried technology.

I was aware there was an American company called MCI (Music Centre Incorporated), which manufactured professional recording equipment. They had a big console in a studio called Criteria, in Miami, in which the Bee Gees had recorded, so I went over to see them.

MCI was very cool at the time and they had the first console that had automation. I felt that aspect of recording was going to be more important as music got more complex and the number of tracks increased. The whole idea of being able to mix in real time didn’t really work anymore.

You’d have six people around the desk, and it took just one mistake and you’d have to start again. Anyway, I met the guy who ran the company, ‘Jeep’ Harned, and thought, ‘This is the stuff.’ We got an MCI JH-500 console, MCI twenty-four-track machines, MCI two-tracks, the whole package. That equipment stayed in the studio for quite some time.

Left: The old granary buildings on Windmill Lane in which the studios were built.

Right: The live room in Studio One.

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The cost of that equipment was quite amazing. I can’t remember the exact details, but I know you could have bought several houses back in ’78. Actually, maybe an entire block of houses, with the cost of the console and the tape machines! It was a big endeavour and a big risk.

James and I talked about it and thought, ‘How are we going to do this? Will we go in low? Will we go in medium?’ I thought, ‘Look, we’re going to do it. You get one chance in a lifetime. Let’s aim high and get the best architect, the best space and the best equipment, and just hope the clients will come.’

T H E F I R S T S E S S I O N I N W I N D M I LL I think the first person I worked with in Windmill after we opened was Bill Whelan. At that point, Bill was a producer, keyboard player and producer/arranger with a lot of up-and-

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Above: The MCI mixing console, Studio One control room.

coming acts in Dublin. He had been working with a singer called Tony Kenny, who was a very popular showband-type crossover act. Bill brought in a beautifully recorded and arranged track that I think he had recorded in Westland / Lombard. We mixed the track and, as far as I remember, that was the first session that took place in Windmill.

Of course, Bill is famous nowadays for his work with Riverdance and lots of other great things. A precursor to Riverdance, however, was Bill’s involvement in the Spirit of Mayo event, and a beautiful composition that I recorded with him called Time Dance, which was a lovely amalgamation of Planxty and orchestra. It was a short piece, but absolutely wonderful. One thing led to another, and then Riverdance suddenly came upon us and changed everything.

T H E S S L C O N S O LE Eventually the MCI went and the SSL came in. The MCI did great service for quite a few years, but in terms of mixing, things had got more and more computer-dependent. There was a very innovative English company called SSL (Solid State Logic), and they had brought out their 4000 series.

SSLs had gone into some of the big studios in the UK, so they were established at that stage, and in ’83 or ’84, we decided we needed to do that. That was a very big move for us. We had no problem selling the MCI to clients in the US. Then I checked out the SSL, and we got it in. That was fantastic. We were so cool then!

Above: Brian Masterson at the SSL console, Studio One.

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02

U2 Brian Masterson: The relationship with U2 meant so

much to us in Windmill. It put us on the map, and gave us an enormous amount of clout in terms of credibility. They came to us in 1980 to record their debut album, Boy. That was a big event, as it turned out.

U2 have recorded so many albums, and they’ve been great clients of ours. It got to the stage that people thought U2 owned Windmill Lane, but no, they were just great clients. We provide great facilities for them, and in fact, we built a whole live room for them later on in their career. But, yes, it was great because of their phenomenal growth. Windmill Lane certainly grew quickly from that, and U2 grew even quicker.

But it’s lovely to say that it all started for them at Windmill, and we’re very proud of our association with them.

I had previously worked with their manager, Paul McGuinness, when he was managing a band called Spud.

I had engineered an album in Lombard/Westland. So I

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knew Paul, James Morris knew Paul, and I recall that somebody had approached Paul to manage U2. We all went and saw them playing upstairs in Toners, and that’s how the relationship started.

AC H T U N G B A BY U2 have recorded lots of great albums, many of them in Windmill Lane. It’s hard to pick one, but I suppose from a technical point of view, Achtung Baby pips everything.

Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno and Steve Lillywhite really mentored that album throughout, but U2 brought in another producer, Flood, at the end because they had so much stuff to mix. Bono was still writing vocals and recording up to the last minute.

In Windmill, we had one team, and I think it was Brian Eno in the actual control room. They then found this lovely

Above: The famous graffiti wall at Windmill Lane.

old Neve desk and moved it into the studio area, but they positioned it so they could see each other. It was like The Gladiators, you know, and that’s how the album finished.

Two desks, two teams, all working at the same time. That’s rock and roll for you!

U2 A N D W I N D M I LL L A N E : THE BEGINNING Adam Clayton: I think we had no idea what was involved

in a recording studio. Pretty much everyone has an image of a mixing desk more than anything else – that’s the most recognisable bit of technology in a studio. For us, the idea of being in a recording studio and making a recording was

something magical. It was not something that we really expected, even though we were all very ambitious for our band. Before discovering Windmill Lane, I think we’d done a couple of recordings in the Eamon Andrews Studios, which at the time was an eight-track studio. We’d also done some recordings at Keystone Studios, which I think was sixteentrack, although I’m not sure about that.

Eamon Andrews Studios was very much like a radio studio. It was very – very small – and suited us quite well, because it wasn’t intimidating. We got some good work done there, and then went to Keystone, which was a basement studio, a proper studio. We were intimidated in that situation, as we discovered it was very hard to play together with separation [EDITOR NOTE: The recording of each instrument and vocal separately]. That was the big challenge for us, because we were coming from a punk aesthetic, and separation, sonically, was not something we understood at

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Above: Adam Clayton.

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all. It was all about making a racket, and you didn’t really care too much what the result was. But obviously, when you’re in a studio, you have to be more disciplined.

Before actually getting into a studio, Bono never had loyalty towards any song lyric. In our early performances, he got up on stage and kind of worked out what he was going to sing about. Once we got into a recording studio, however, and he had to repeat what he was singing in each take, he had to structure the lyrics, which was a bit of a shock, I think.

In March 1978, U2 entered the Harp lager ‘Pop Group ’78’ competition and, miraculously, we won. I still wonder how on earth that happened! It comprised a raggle taggle bunch of performers and bands, some of which were from the showband era. I remember there was a band called the East Coast Angels, and they were very professional, but we won it.

Our first Windmill Lane session was with Chas de Whalley, an English A&R man from CBS, who produced the demos. That was tough, because Windmill Lane was state-of-the-art, with soundproofed separation, a very sophisticated control room and lots of equipment. My memory is that it was very intimidating.

Even back then, in the late ’70s early ’80s, there was this hangover from the ’60s that the talent, the musicians, didn’t go into the control room, that the control room in a recording studio was for the white-coated boffins and the audio scientists. The idea that a bunch of pimply teenagers might come in there and have an opinion was somewhat frowned upon, so, yes, it was certainly intimidating.

What was great about Windmill Lane in those early years, however, was that the creative and artistic community, in terms of pop culture, existed in the advertising agencies. That’s where Paul McGuinness came from. That’s where Kathy Gilfillan, his wife, came from. It was where James Morris and the people that set up Windmill Lane came from. So, oddly enough, that was the community we were connected to. When we went into Windmill Lane, we befriended not the top management – that was Paul McGuinness’s territory, his peer group – but everyone else, from the receptionist when you walked in to the machine operators in the editing suites.

S E T T LI N G I N TO W I N D M I LL L A N E It was very much the producer Steve Lillywhite who eased us into the studio. We had recorded our first single for Island Records, ‘11 O’Clock Tick Tock’, with Joy Division’s producer Martin Hannett, and that was very troublesome for us. There was a lot of expectation on that single to do well, but the band, particularly Larry and myself, found it very hard to perform. We were also on a tight budget, so we had to work all night, and it just wasn’t satisfying.

But when Steve came along, he went, ‘Oh, you can’t play in this environment; it’s absolutely dead. You need to feel the room giving you something back.’ At that point, we started

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to record the drums at night in the main hallway in the stairwell – which, curiously enough, I later discovered was how John Bonham’s drums had been recorded on the Led Zeppelin albums – and because he understood the sonics of the studio, Steve homed in on something that we absorbed.

Another thing he did was to order in a load of corrugated iron, and we would build these corrugated iron structures around the instruments, just to give the sound a bit more life. Of course, the boffins at Windmill Lane were horrified that we were desecrating their lovely, wonderful studio! Had we been going into the studios now, I think we would have totally valued where we were, but in those early days, in keeping with the spirit of punk, we didn’t appreciate such an expensive, acoustically tuned room.

At that time, there was something kind of romantic and interesting about the dockland area, and what went on there. I think it’s true to say that Bono’s lyrics for some of the songs were based around what he was seeing in the area. Certainly, if you think about the relationship between where Windmill Lane originally was and the Grand Canal Basin, which has now been totally transformed – back then it was just warehousing that wasn’t used very much. I remember when we did the photographs around the Grand Canal docks for our second album, October, we literally went out of the studio from recording, and walked around the corner. I think the only other human being around there at the time was the lock keeper and his dog, Skipper.

‘ THE IDEA OF BEING IN A RECORDING STUDIO WAS SOMETHING MAGICAL.’

R E C O R D I N G B OY It was very, very exciting – Steve really coached us very well.

He was only a couple of years older than us, so we all felt like we were in the same gang. He unlocked the studio for us, and he showed us that recording could be fun.

I think we had a budget of about £60,000, and that bought us roughly a month, maybe five weeks. The songs we had performed in a live context were probably a bit ropey, because we didn’t have any technique or discipline, but Steve put a structure on them. We all played around with the idea of overdubbing – I started to do bass overdubs, which was the first time I’d done that. This was something that Martin Hannett had suggested I do on ‘11 O’Clock Tick Tock’, which is obviously what he was doing with Peter Hook, the bass guitarist of Joy Division. That was fun for me. Edge, of course, had his scientist hat on and was experimenting with sonics. He and Steve worked quite well together, and Steve just made it fun.

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We all felt a bit naughty whenever the Windmill Lane management came down from their offices and into the recording environment. There was a very good studio manager at the time called Annie Furlong, who is probably legendary in the Windmill Lane story.

Later, Irene Keogh took over the studio manager position, and she was fantastic as well.

Funnily enough, I remember that in my particular situation, because we weren’t really earning any money out of the advance – I think we were paying ourselves something like £25 each per week – I was still living at home. I remember after coming back from an all-night recording session, my father insisted I get up a ladder and help paint the outside walls of our house. So, it was very unglamorous when I got home!

O C TO B E R , WA R A N D P E AC E I would say we were looked after really well by everyone at Windmill Lane, but our particular struggle was always with the songs. For Boy, we had our material fairly well sorted.

We were rehearsed, we had the arrangements, and we went in with Steve.

By the time we came to do the second album, October, we weren’t very prepared. We had a few sketches for songs, but Bono had lost his lyrics – they’d been stolen somewhere in America – and I suppose we were beginning to realise what was at stake. By then, we’d been around the world, having played loads of gigs. We knew that if we were to survive and hold on to our record deal, we needed to make a record with some big songs on it. ‘Gloria’ was our big chance at that, and it was, I guess, a minor hit at the time.

The album, as history will remember, was very much about the conflict in the band, about whether or not to continue, and how Bono, Edge and Larry felt about reconciling their Christian beliefs with working in the music industry. The atmosphere was very fraught, I would say. Again, we didn’t have that much of a budget, and so the recording of it was completed very, very quickly. Certainly, Paul McGuinness’s advice at the time was that it didn’t matter if we didn’t have the best of songs, but that we needed to keep the momentum going. We needed to put October out, and we needed to get back touring, particularly to America.

Opposite: Flood and Bono outside Windmill Lane Recording Studios, Ringsend, 1993.

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By the time we came to record War, we realised we were going to be dropped from Island Records if we didn’t come up with something, so Edge worked very hard on writing ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, and Bono worked very hard on honing the album’s lyrical content and direction. Of course, the very fact of calling the album War was confrontational.

I guess we were settled, in a sense, and it was also our third record with Steve, so by then we were comfortable, and we were confident of the material. That said, when I go back to that album, I realise that apart from the set pieces, it was still a bit of a sketch. We had drafted in backing singers from Kid Creole and the Coconuts (Cheryl Poirier, Adriana Kaegi and Taryn Hagey) to beef up the sound, and we used one of their trumpet players, Kenny Fradley, on the song ‘Red Light’. It was quite an eclectic mix of material, but it was a great record and, as they say, the rest is history.

having an international recording studio in Dublin at that time, so everybody was invested in making it a success. I would say that Windmill Lane was a significant reason why we were able to base ourselves in Ireland. Without studios in Ireland, bands would go to England. They would make their records in various recording studios there and kind of end up staying there, even though it was expensive.

But we were able to incubate or develop in Ireland, and in many ways, I think our first three albums [Boy, October and War] were U2 learning how to do that. I suppose it was our university education in recording and making records, and I think by the time we got to The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree, we more or less knew what we were doing.

It was amazing for U2 to be a part of that Irish cultural music revolution. If you think of what had come before, it began with the showbands, who mostly recorded in the UK, and then you had Rory Gallagher, Horslips, Thin Lizzy and Boomtown Rats, who all recorded outside Ireland. It was a big thing to have a studio that could both attract international talent and also serve the talent that existed in the country.

U2 A N D W I N D M I LL L A N E – T H E LE GACY

T H E CA M E R A D E R I E

It’s worth noting that it was hugely risky for James Morris, Russ Russell and Meiert Avis to realise their dream of

It was very much a community for us. We would arrive at the studios about lunchtime and we would work through the

Above: The old Grand Canal Docks sign, which features in photographs of U2.

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day and then usually up to about midnight, so we were living on the premises, pretty much. We would drop into the edit suites and talk about video ideas with the editors. That’s how we started working with Meiert Avis, who did all our videos at the time.

In some ways, however, it was always the last day that was the most memorable, because finally you came out with an album. It was always an all-night session. You worked through to the morning, and in those days, Annie Furlong or Irene Keogh would come in, there’d be a big breakfast and then you would retire to The Dockers pub. And that was it, really – game over!

Left: Mixing on the SSL in Studio One. Right: ‘ Pink Adam’ outside Windmill Lane Recording Studios, Ringsend Road.

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HOW DO YOU START A STUDIO? BEGINNINGS James Morris: In my twenties, I was in a band with Shaun

Davey, who would go on to be a very well-known composer.

When the band finished, we worked as a duo and recorded some of the songs at the Merrion Square flat of DÓnal Lunny.

We sent the songs over to London, and a man from April Music, which was then part of CBS, flew into Dublin and took us out to lunch at the Bernie Inn in Nassau Street. He gave us a glass of wine and then produced a contract. ‘Just sign here, lads, and we’ll give you some money.’ After that lunch, a bit high on a glass of Beaujolais, I bought a Fender bass guitar from the music shop McCullough Pigott.

Shaun and I, very amicably, went our separate ways in the late ’60s. It was the era of the beat scene in Dublin, which was amazing, so there were the likes of Granny’s Intentions and Ditch Cassidy, who was one of the best

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singers in the world at that time. There was also a band called Supply, Demand and Curve, whose bass player was Brian Masterson. I didn’t know him then, but I knew he was a much better bass player than me.

Ultimately, I realised being a musician wasn’t for me, so I went my own way and fairly quickly got my start as a runner in film editing in Soho, London. I worked my way up in three years, and ended up in a major film editing company in Dean Street. I came back to Dublin as a trained film editor. There was no work in Dublin, but a guy called Rory O’Farrell, who was a bit of a legend and one of the few people in RTÉ to leave and set up his own editing company, took me on.

My friend Russ Russell was working as a copywriter in an ad agency. We had been friends from studying together at Trinity College. I said to him that I thought Sanderson Vere Crane, who I’d worked with in London, would back

me to set up a film editing company in Dublin, and did he want to come in on the venture? He said yes, so I left Rory, and Russ and I set up in Herbert Lane. After some months, Shaun Davey asked if I knew Brian Masterson well; he said that he was a brilliant engineer, who we could talk to about the possibility of setting up a really good studio in Dublin for musicians.

Above: James Morris, co-founder of Windmill Lane Recording Studios.

A SEED PLANTED Because of the way I’d been working in London, I knew that the tax rate on musicians, if they had a hit record, was 80%.

If you had a hit record in the UK, you were told two things: one was to get out of the country for tax reasons, and the other was to quickly make another record as a follow-up. So that was part of the reasoning behind the decision to build

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Above: James Morris examines progress on the building of the studios, late 1970s.

Left: Brian Masterson at the controls in Studio One.

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a recording studio. If we had a studio in Dublin, we reckoned we could capitalise on UK musicians needing not only to spend time out of the UK, but also to record. Of course, we knew the studio would have to be world-class. At that time, there was the Eamonn Andrews Studios in Harcourt Street and, I think, Lombard Studios in Westland Row. I met Brian, who was working out of Eamonn Andrews’ studios. We met in a pub, and realised we vaguely knew each other from the beat scene days. I told him we were thinking of building a studio, and did he want to join us? It’s not something you would think would be taken seriously today. It was impulsive, but Russ and I, our business, was making a lot of money editing commercials.

Plus, I saw an opportunity. I thought this would allow us to work in a bigger world than Dublin advertising – which I loved, but which was quite a sealed world. Whereas, if we had a studio ...

The only place in Dublin at the time that had affordable real estate was the docks, but nobody wanted to be based at the docks then – it was just not a place you wanted to go to. The ad agency people said that they’d never come to look at the work. History has proven it did work, of course, but before we did it, everyone said we were insane.

We bought the studio buildings and the beautiful old stone warehouses from the Shannon Shoe Company. Brian was working away, although we couldn’t afford to pay him until we bought 4 Windmill Lane in October 1977. We built it and developed it in ’78, and had early trial sessions between February and April ’79. Brian and I both knew what it had to be if it was going to make the grade internationally. Did we know the risks? There was a sense of risk, of course, but I said to Russ that we would only lose what we never had before. I was young enough to say that. But we built it, and they did most certainly come.

‘ WE BUILT IT, AND THEY DID MOST CERTAINLY COME.’

THE STUDIO Two things happened. Brian was, of course, building his reputation. Brian had experience as a musician and artist, so he’s creative, but he’s also very technically proficient, so he knew exactly what consoles, equipment and so on were required. He did all that and he brought in his contacts, people like Bill Whelan and others. My brother-in-law Michael Deeny managed Horslips and the rock band Mama’s Boys, who came in to record.

Right: The old granary building at Windmill Lane.

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Above: Shaun Davey in the control room during the recording of The Brendan Voyage, 1980.

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Brian’s reputation is massive now, but none of us were successful then, just ambitious.

Very shortly after that, in October ’79, Paul McGuinness came. He had just started managing U2. When I returned to Dublin, Paul was working as an assistant film director for John Boorman, who had directed films such as Zardoz and later Excalibur.

When Paul came in, he instantly saw something in Windmill Lane that other people didn’t. He realised as much as we did that the studio was one that any record company would come to. He said, ‘This works for me because the band and I want to do it from Ireland.’ It was fairly common knowledge at this time that the pathway to international success for every Irish band up until U2 was through London. Paul and the band had a different idea, however, and would go straight to America and make it from there. It wasn’t that easy, of course – when it came to being signed, Island Records were the last on the list for signing an international recording contract.

In talking with Paul, I realised that if I had stayed in London, I might have been stuck. But word spread very rapidly to support our business, and then international work arrived. You could sense something was happening. Myself and Russ, who Paul also knew from Trinity, were flying as film editors, and the Windmill Lane location wasn’t exactly the bandit country people thought it was.

And then Meiert Avis arrived. He was a friend of my younger brother, Tim, who said that Meiert wanted to work in film.

I don’t think it’s a secret, but when U2 first came into the studios, they didn’t like it. It wasn’t their ‘sound’, they said.

They loved the building, though, and they loved the buzz of what was going on. They found Meiert very interesting.

He was up there noodling away on video, and they trusted him to make their video for ‘Gloria’. It was a breakthrough for them as a band, and it’s still shown on music channels.

It was made for small money, on film stock, and Meiert directed it. He went on to make about ten videos for U2, including ‘With or Without You’ and ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’.

CHANGES Certain parts of the history of Windmill Lane are contested.

Meiert and Russ didn’t like the way I went hell-for-leather for the TV3 Licence. Because of the way we had to go through examinership over TV3, we lost everything and we had to refinance the company, but I am very proud of what we achieved.

My real memory of it is that it was such a buzz working with other talented people. I started as a runner in London’s Wardour Street, picking up rushes at eight o’clock every morning, you know. But I absolutely have good memories of Windmill Lane in the ’80s, and also of the next twenty-three years with the Windmill Lane film and TV company, after the recording studios and Brian moved out of Windmill Lane. There are an awful lot of people who found a doorway there into their careers. And, let’s be honest, we were the only show in town in the early ’80s!

Right: A two-track reel-to-reel tape machine, Studio Three.

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