I gave up that idea in late high school. The idea of practicing endlessly was just too much. But I had a damn good education, I must say. And a very wide-ranging taste in music: everything from jazz to blues to rock 'n' roll to R&B. Popular music. Bach, Brahms, Beethoven. Bartók. Shostakovich. I was interested in all forms of music.

There aren't that many people who get that kind of education anymore.

That's true, and it's unfortunate. Even the guys up at Berklee, where I do some teaching, are so specialized now.

You moved from Advision to Pye, which was more of a music-oriented studio.

Yes it was. My first mentor was a guy named Bob Auger. Bob was building Pye Studios, and it was very unusual in the sense that it was basically an American-style studio. He had a dear friend in New York named Bob Fine, of Fine Recording Studios, and Bob Auger was tremendously influenced by him. So when Bob decided to build Pye, he made it like an American studio with Pultecs, great mics and all. In fact, he went so far as to have an entire room, with big transformers, wired for 110, which was highly unusual. He thought the machines performed better at 110. We had a Neumann mobile board that was plopped down in the Studio A control room; the preamps were down on the floor, and my job was to run down and move the attenuator 10 dB, 20 dB. It was all Ampex 300 3-track. We recorded Sammy Davis Jr. in an amazing first-time midnight session. We'd go down [to Walthamstow Town Hall] and make classical recordings with a portable Ampex 3-track and three Neumann U47s. That was it; you had to figure out how to make it sound good. That influenced me tremendously; in fact, it influenced how I record drums. We did some great sessions at Pye: The Kinks, Petula Clark, all sorts of pop and rock things.

You were still an assistant.

Yes, it took me awhile to become an engineer. It took me from '62 to about '66. It was when I went to Olympic that I became an engineer full time.

How did you end up there? I know you'd worked at your own studio, and at Regent Sound after Pye.

Well, I just kept hearing about Olympic through the grapevine, and then I kept pestering [Olympic technical director] Keith Grant, who was also a student of Bob Auger's, so there was a heritage there. Keith was an amazing engineer. He taught me how to do so many things. One of the famous sessions we did together was The Beatles' “Baby You're a Rich Man,” and I also did “All You Need Is Love.” It was a great training ground and the studio was just a magical place. It was remarkable in the sense that it was the up-and-coming independent studio.

“Baby You're a Rich Man” was done at Olympic?

Yes. Of course, The Beatles almost always worked at EMI, but they came to Olympic for the very simple reason that they couldn't get into EMI at the time and they wanted to record. We were the competition and we got the gig. “Baby You're a Rich Man” was recorded, overdubbed and mixed all in one night.

I'd been recording Jimi and the Stones and that was really cool, but The Beatles coming in was a very big deal and I was nervous. You know, for a while, I'd been taking pictures of all the artists I was working with, but this was the one time I chickened out. I didn't think it was appropriate at the time. It would have been nice to have some photos of that, of course. [Laughs]

Speaking of the Stones, you've said that their producer, Jimmy Miller, was another teacher and mentor.

When I think back, the three people that influenced me the most were Bob Auger and Keith Grant as engineers, but as a producer, Jimmy Miller was it; he was the king. He had such a wonderful ability to sense where the band was at, get into their heads, get their confidence, and then fire them up in the studio and get great performances from them. He was able to put such a spark into the cutting of the tracks. I started working with him on Traffic's Mr. Fantasy and then moved onto the Stones' Beggar's Banquet. He was an extremely impressive individual. He was able to grab the artist by the balls and bring them along with him. He could help them with song structures and be very involved on that level, or be a fly on the wall when he needed to be.

So many of the big albums from that era — Sgt. Pepper, the first Traffic album, the Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request — were notable for the amount of musical and sonic experimentation on them. No idea was too weird, it seemed.

We were willing to take chances and encouraged to take chances. That was a part of the spirit of those times. It didn't matter, somehow, whether this player or that player could really play some of these instruments. No one was thinking, “Well, they're not going to play a track with a sitar on the radio!” If it sounded cool and it was going to add to the track, we'd try it, and sometimes we'd use it.

When did you first encounter Hendrix?

Well, of course I knew about him already. Jimi had come to London from America [in the fall of '66] and almost immediately, he had a hit with “Hey Joe.” The word was out that there was this amazing American guitar player. Anyway, I remember one day, the studio manager [at Olympic] — this lovely, very prim and proper English lady — saying to me, “Oh Eddie, there's this American chappie with big hair named Hendrix coming in. You do all the weird stuff, so why don't you do this session?” At that time at Olympic, I was doing avant-garde jazz, experimenting, trying all of these different things. So I got the Hendrix gig, and, obviously it was a very fortuitous experience. [Laughs]

They'd already recorded “Hey Joe” and some B-sides — maybe three or four songs — so what we did was continued with that work on what became the first album [Are You Experienced?]. We re-cut some guitars and then started new tracks. It was a wonderful time. Imagine the excitement of being in the studio with Jimi — he was so incredible! We hit it off immediately. He'd be in there cranking up the guitar and I'd hear these amazing sounds, and I'd think, “Okay, let's see what happens to that sound if I tweak it like this.” Then he'd come in the control room, listen and say, “Whoa, that's cool, man! What happens if you do that and then I turn this knob?” So he'd try this and try that. He was excited about what I was doing and I would get excited about what he was doing; it was a great feeling of camaraderie, because every time we rolled tape, we were doing something new. Chas Chandler [Hendrix's manager and producer] said it so well: “The rules were, there are no rules.” I have to quote him, because without Chas, we wouldn't be talking right now! [Laughs] Chas was “the guv'nor.” He really helped Jimi tremendously on those first two records.