2004 - Atlântico

Right place, wrong time?

What was I doing there? How did I come to be in Rio just then?
It is not entirely straightforward nor is it clear to me even now.
I had enjoyed some recording success with a band in the late 70’s - early 80’s in the UK. In those days a band needed to sell more records than we did to sustain the interest, support and, most importantly, the financing of a major record label. After the difficult second album and the tragic third, the small print was invoked and we were unceremoniously dropped.
We might have eeked out a living on the road in Europe and North America on the back of the second album which had achieved a kind of cult status. But we all aspired to a more comfortable standard of living than cheap hotels and tour buses. The tours we had done were enough to kill any romantic notions we may have had about life on the road. So we went our separate ways.
The regular use of an instrumental track I had penned in TV documentaries, movie trailers and even a computer game provided me with a steady income stream. While not exactly a gold plated pension it was enough to fund my wife’s cellar and winters on the Côte D’Azur.

Wrong place, right time?

Almost without realising it I was slid into record production. Shortly after the band expired the record company asked me to organise a chaotic newly signed band for a first recording session. A number of similar requests followed in quick succession and after the success of one or two recordings, the artists themselves began to ask for me. I was not one of those producers with a sound the artist wanted to adopt. But I seemed to have a knack of bringing order to the proceedings and helping people capture their own distinctive sound.
Early in 2004 I was in Brussels supervising the mixing and cutting of an album by a Scandinavian keyboardist – Nordic noir, airport lounge, music to commit suicide to – if you were generous you might call it contemporary jazz. I had managed to escape the constraints of “rock” music. The album had been recorded the previous month in Paris.
At the studios I ran into a Brazilian guitarist who loomed large in my record collection – a leading exponent of what my youngest daughter refers to as “Spanish sex music”, though I keep telling her they are singing in Portuguese. Remarkably he recognised me – he was familiar with that track and had even recorded it early on in his career – a fact of which I was unaware. We chatted, discovered a number of common interests and acquaintances. Later that evening we had coffee at a bar near the studios. The next day he found me and took my contact details before leaving.
So I assumed that it was as a result of this encounter that, shortly afterwards, I received an invitation to go to Rio to produce an album by a singer – songwriter – guitarist, and stable mate of my new friend.
A meeting was arranged in London to plan and rehearse with the artist and his band while they were in Europe on tour. After this I was extremely excited – not just about the venue for the recording, but also the music which was so delightful and a departure from the genres in which I had worked to date.

Right place, right time?

From the studios in Rio there is a clear view to the Atlantic. It is said that if you listen carefully to tracks recorded there you can hear the breakers in the background.
In Latin America the street sounds sing. They are organic and musical. In European capitals they are unswerving like the metallic grinding of the tram wheels. In Brazil they are loose, at liberty, sweating and soaring like the rainforest. In Brussels they are trapped and squeezed, the atmosphere doused in negative ions, hydrocarbon and nuclear. In Rio it is juiced, nutritious and invigorating.
I was revelling in all this on the short walk back from the studios to the hotel. It was my last night before flying home. When …

Wrong place, wrong time?

… grabbed from behind by two pairs of grimy butcher’s hands I was bundled through the side door into the back of a big van. Tyres screeched as the van lurched forward. Stunned I was - and staring at two moustachioed heavies from a Robert Rodriguez movie on the bench seat opposite. We sped through the streets bumping and bouncing. There was enough light in the back of the van to see the glint of a knife and the shadow of a handgun. I was frozen.
In five minutes we turned sharply and jerked to a halt. I was poked and prodded in Portuguese across a small courtyard, judging from the crates and bottle loaded bins, behind one of the many bars in that part of the city. In a storeroom, pickled in the sickly smell of stale beer, cooking fat and cigarette smoke I was thrown into a cracked and yellowing plastic garden chair which buckled under my weight.
In less than the time I needed to gather my thoughts, the “boss” came in. A glance at me and I didn’t need to understand a word of Portuguese to know he was seriously pissed with the two stooges. He punched their rewind button and in some bizarrely comic Benny Hill fashion we replayed the past 10 minutes in reverse and I found myself back on the street staggering towards my hotel, shaken and very definitely stirred.
I glided dizzily across the hotel lobby to the desk wondering how many notches below “kidnapped by aliens” my story fell on the credibility scale. I asked the clerk for my key and also if he would call the local policia. I wanted to report an incident.
“Someone left a package here for you” he said, picking up a small jiffy bag from beneath the desk. With all the skill of a seasoned conjuror, the manager intercepted the package mid-air as the clerk held it out to me.
“My apologies Senhor. We have another customer of the same name here. The package is for him I am sure.” He made a show of scrutinising the address and returned the package it to its place under the desk. 
By the following day the whole experience had dematerialised like an old dream. Still, sucking on an espresso in the departure lounge, the news screen behind the bar caught my eye. There was a long shot of the front of my hotel - the scrolling text read “British businessman critically injured in letter bomb attack.”