Recording studios are pretty surreal environments. They are generally windowless (excepting the airy, beastie-infested Firefly Studios), isolated and sound proofed (so no on
e can hear you scream in frustration when Protools crashes for the 100th time that day). Working in a studio is intense, once the creative wheels start turning there’s no stopping that train till someone falls down dead, drunk or defeated. And in that room, you don’t even notice the time pass.
Except… you get hungry. Or I do. Hughie on the other hand, can exist for
days in the studio on nothing but inspiration and 2L bottles of sparkling water.
This is somewhat of an exaggeration I suppose… the guy does eat. He just bears his hunger more gracefully than I do. And when I get hungry in the studio, Hughie has to bear that too.
My metabolism is an insatiable monster to which I am entirely beholden. I used to not notice it in the studio, absorbed as I was in writing and recording. But as the hours pass, our ideas (even the good ones) are “kinda dumb”, and all my notes (even the tuneful ones) are “kinda flat”. Turns out that when I’m hungry, I’m kinda an asshole and Hughie is the studio punching bag, poor fella.
Once we diagnosed this relentless pessimism as hunger Hughie took to keeping a packet of chips on top of the upright piano.
He doesn’t even keep a clock in the studio anymore, he can tell time by the regularity with which he needs to medicate me with a Dorito.