Original subtitles

And the door opened and Mani fell in the room

and Wreny just flopped on the...on the settee,

and then I realised they were all covered in paint.

They'd recorded a single called Sally Cinnamon

and their old record company had released it

as their next single without their permission.

They called into B&Q, the paint shop,

and went to his office and just threw paint everywhere

and jumped in the van and drove to Rockfield

and sat there waiting to see what the repercussions were.

I said, "Look, we're all set up. Let's get out there and record."

And they actually sat there and recorded

with the paint still in their hair.

The police turned up at eight o'clock the next morning,

arrested them, and got them all out of bed.

REPORTER: Gary Mounfield, John Squire,

Alan Wren and Ian Brown

arrived at Wolverhampton Crown Court to a noisy greeting

from about 30 fans.

MUSIC: Love Spreads by The Stone Roses

The second album with The Stone Roses

was done through an American record company.

Geffen were quite prepared to throw lots of money,

millions of pounds, at the band, to do whatever they wanted.

They told me, did I want to do the next session,

and it was The Stone Roses.

As you can imagine, 16, very exciting.

Yeah, what an opportunity.

A lot of pressure on them, but they just seemed relaxed.

From day one, it was great fun, absolutely great fun.

ANN: We had The Stone Roses here and two of the cows had calved.

"Oh, gosh, we must go out and see the calves,"

so we had to take them across the meadow to see the calves.

NICK: Mani embraced life around here. He was out fishing,

he became great friends with a lot of the local lads.

Mani became such a part of Monmouth, shall we say.

He met his girlfriend here, they have a son together,

and they met in Monmouth when he was in Monmouth.

JOHN: They stayed there for 14 months.

That album was called The Second Coming.

It was a long time coming.

LISA: There was one occasion that the executives from the label,

from America, were coming over and they flew over on Concorde.

It was a big, big deal.

And they all came down in their limos,

and they arrived here, and the band had gone.

Yeah, they went home.

They'd flown in and they, yeah, they went home.

And they'd taken the tapes as well, I think,

so we couldn't play them anything.

HE LAUGHS

The first time we went over there was when we went to fucking

have a little snoop on The Stone Roses, wasn't it? Yeah.

You drove the combine harvester over there...

Yeah. ..in the middle of the night.

Just, we were going, "What the fuck are they up to?!"

Cos they hadn't been doing anything for years and we'd sort of...

And I'm on about a proper combine harvester. Proper big one.

Ones that you've got to get ladders up to and it's like miles...

It's higher than that fucking roof. Yeah.

And he fucking starts it in one go and off we fucking go.

Irish blood. Crawling down the road with the big fucking lights on.

It looked like fucking... It looked bonkers.

War Of The Worlds. And then we fucking...

I think we drove it into the thing, turned the lights off,

and rolled over like something out of the Professionals

and fucking... # Dum-di, dum-di, dum-dum... #

Over the edge and then we fucking pops up and we could hear some

fucking bass line and drums going on. And then we kind of heard...

And then, I think we got caught and they brought us in, didn't they?

I don't think we brought the combine harvester back.

Yeah, we left it there.

Very dangerous. Very dangerous, yeah. I think we got fucking caught

by someone and we went in, didn't we? Yeah.

Had a little chat with Ian Brown and a few people

and they were playing some songs and stuff and we might have had

a spliff and that and then I think we fucking fucked off.

And then, I think they did it the next night.

I think they come over... Mani turned up on a tractor.

On a tractor... Yeah. ..while we were in bed, and, so they say,

they robbed all of Guigsy's weed, all our weed and that.

We'd had one album, everything was going well, I think.

And I think the money might have started...

Maybe it might have started trickling in. Maybe it wasn't.

No, it was. Yeah, the money'd started coming in.

Sales had gone well.

Definitely Maybe was up there, wasn't it?

Yeah, so it was the second album, Morning Glory,

and I think we were completely still off our heads.

Yeah, it felt mega. It was like, you know...

It was like, that's what you sort of read about, you go, "Fucking

"hell, this is what it's fucking all about, this rock 'n' roll, man!"

You know, you lived there and you didn't leave the studio

until you had your album finished.

It's like the Big Brother house, isn't it? But with tunes! Yeah.

Our first album went to number one, it was like, I guess,

the height of the Manchester kind of boom thing.

Our manager at the time thought it was a good idea to send us

away to kind of write and record an album

and to spend six weeks in one space. But, um, you know, it was...

It was a great idea, but it was also pretty nuts as well.

No distractions. Well, apart from going... Monmouth town centre.

Which was rocking, you know, there was two pubs there! Three, actually.

Was there three? Yeah, yeah!

We were in the middle of the Welsh countryside,

with just other people who were kind of quite like-minded people.

You could get up to whatever you wanted.

So, you did.

Could have gone to all these studios that had swimming pools

and huge games rooms and restaurants and stuff,

but we'd rather just come and play with the cows

and stuff.

For, you know, young people in their mid twenties, it was ideal

because we were just into getting drunk

and taking drugs and making music.

There was no-one there telling you what you couldn't do.

As long as the work was getting done, you know,

the record company would come down and check every now and again.

And Columbia turned up from America and the only person in the studio

was me and I was lying down with my head in the Leslie speaker,

tripping on acid, kind of just going round and round.

I'd been there for hours.

But, at the same time, we were getting our dinners

cooked for us, you know, Mother's there in the kitchen...

And the ladies who would come in and clean up for us.

We'd come in in the morning

and all our drugs would be lined out really neatly on the side for us.

So it was perfect.

Just perfect, yeah.

The '90s was an amazing time.

You know, we were booked nine months in advance,

both studios, back-to-back.

We would have a session leaving on a Monday morning

and they'd be loading out the one door

and the next session would be loading in the other door.

And it was constant.

But it was amazing time for guitar-based bands in British music.

You know, it absolutely was.

Why men in guitar bands?

I don't know. I don't really know why that would be.

I suppose, at the time... I mean, obviously, there were

big female singers and stuff, weren't there?

And there were big female rock artists and stuff,

but we tended to get the men, that I can remem...

That I can think of.

Fucking...

Fucking...!

With Oasis, it was quick, it was fast, cos, obviously,

coming off the back of The Stone Roses album

that took 14 months,

erm, and then other albums that I'd done, they were fast.

We was kind of working on a song a day.

Noel would get in and he'd put a guide acoustic down, always.

Whitey'd nail the drums and it'd be like bass, in with the bass, Guigs,

me, him with the guitar, he'd do his overdubs, he'd come in and sing.

It was really quick

and I remember a really quick session, song after song.

That's cos there was like loads of pubs in town that we heard

that were good, you know what I mean? It was like, get in there

and fucking smash it out and then fucking pub! Pub.

For some... We just loved being in the pub.

What was Monmouth like? Full of pubs!

I'd do bits of engineering, keep the tape machines running,

set up all the microphones, you know, record the band.

Um, a lot of driving to the pub.

All hours.

You'd wait...

Obviously, you'd wait until you get your stuff done and that,

but as soon as you get your stuff done,

if that was done at one in the afternoon... Pub.

..you'd be in the pub by ten past one, you know what I mean?

Did you ever work...?

Carry on doing stuff when you got back from the pub at night?

You'd have a go. You'd have a go, but it'd be fucking...

You'd sound like The Pogues.

Yeah, I mean, I would just go to the pub till we came back

and I would drive everyone back, you know.

Obviously, somebody had to remain sober

because we were on tape back in them days.

There was a little bit of debate on who was going to sing Wonderwall.

Noel was going to sing Wonderwall and Liam was going to sing

Wonderwall, then Noel said,

"OK, I'll sing Don't Look Back In Anger,"

and then Liam was...

Wanted to sing Don't Look Back In Anger,

so there was the debate on who was going to sing what.

Everyone wanted to make the songs the best they could

and Noel wanted to do it too

and if that breeded a bit of fucking competition,

then so be it, you know what I mean,

I didn't want to go in there,

be better than Bonehead, or better than Guigs,

I just wanted to go and be better than me,

you know what I mean? I wanted to go and do my thing and...

I just wanted...

When I'd hear them putting the songs on, I'd go,

"Right, this fucking tune needs a banging vocal,

"so hopefully I can deliver it," you know what I mean?

What did you think of Wonderwall when you first...?

I didn't like it at first. I thought it was a bit funky and I thought...

I thought it sounded like a reggae song to me. Yeah.

Proper sounded like a reggae song.

Yeah. I thought, "What's going on?!" It's weird.

# Today is gonna be the day that they're gonna throw it back to you

# By now you should've somehow realised what you gotta do

# I don't believe that anybody

# Feels the way I do, about you now... #

How long did it take you to record the vocal for Wonderwall?

Not long because the fucking party was happy hour...

Saturday night, wasn't it? Two for one!

Yeah, yeah, I think it was like... Two for one.

It was early doors, man!

So I just whipped that down in about 30 seconds, man.

# I don't believe that anybody

# Feels the way I do about you now

# And all the roads we have to walk are winding... #

I remember doing Wonderwall, had to set him up on the wall,

outside the Coach House studio.

So I've set the mics up up there and he's doing...

The guide guitars for Wonderwall were done on top of the wall.

So, I'd been into town... Oh, yeah.

Probably had a couple of lagers, but I bought a remote control car,

right? Proper... You know, big fat wheels on it.

And I'm looking out the lounge and I see Noel sat up on a wall

with loads of microphones on him, outside with an acoustic guitar.

And I was like, "What the fuck?! What's he doing?!"

And he's trying to catch the atmosphere, you know,

the birds singing and all that stuff.

So I was like, "I'm getting him!"

So I've got this car and I'm like, "I'm not having this!" Fucking...

So, I was like... Got it into first gear, so this car's like, "Zim-zim!"

I can see Noel's head like...

In his headphones, "What the fuck's that noise?!

"Is that a bird?!" You know what I mean! Fuck it, man! Yeah, yeah!

# You're gonna be the one that saves me... #

We would definitely have a few little nights

where we were all very pleased with our work

and that and we'd go,

"Shall we listen to it back five million times and fucking..."

Double loud. "..pat each other on the back and that."

We definitely did a lot of that.

This one night, we were sleeping in the front of the house,

and they were working in the Coach House studio

and we'd gone to bed,

normally, I suppose, I don't know, 11, 12 o'clock, something like that.

And we couldn't get to sleep because we could hear the music so loud.

Kingsley kept saying, "I hope the villagers can't hear it."

We stuck it out to four o'clock

and Kingsley said, "It's no good.

"We're going to have to tell them to stop it."

So I came down the stairs, came out through the back,

and as I got to the studios, the outside door was open

and the inner door was wide open.

I was standing there like this. And I could see them going, "It's Ann!

"It's Ann!" And of course, he switched all the lights on then.

"Oh, Ann, Ann, sorry... Er, is there a problem?"

"Well, yes, there is, actually."

I said, "Kingsley and I haven't been able to get to sleep

"because of the music."

And I said, "I don't know what the villagers are like, but could I ask

"you to close the outside doors,

"or at least both doors, while you carry on?"

"Oh, right. OK. Right, thanks, Ann. Thank you."

And they apologised to Ann the next day.

# Wake up, it's a beautiful morning

# Wake up, it's a beautiful morning

# Wake up, it's a beautiful morning... #

Shall I turn this off...?

As soon as I started playing it,

as soon as I played those three chords,

I knew it was going to be something different.

I really like minor chords.

I really like soul music cos it's like uplifting

but sad at the same time.

I wanted to get a brass section in.

And I'd sent them a demo and a couple of notes and they turned up.

I think it was Tom Jones's brass section.

And it was so cheerful, what they were playing, I was aghast.

"Can you not just...flatten a few notes there?"

And they did and they still... It's just too chirpy for me.

# Summer's gone, days spent... #

"Summer's gone, days spent with the grass and the sun."

I was trying to get drug references in!

But as soon as those first three chords, we just went for it.

# Wake up, it's a beautiful morning

# The sun shining for your eyes... #

I think everybody were pinning their hopes on that one track.

It just got played everywhere.

I mean, it still gets played everywhere.

I don't know who plays it. Someone's playing it all the time.

Rockfield now was rocketing, and, in 1997,

out of the top ten albums, Rockfield had seven in the top ten.

I can't remember who they were,

but we know that seven of the top ten were done at Rockfield.

OK? We grew up in South Wales. Rockfield, it's a legendary place.

It was the first ever residential recording

studio in the world, apparently.

Kingsley says! Kingsley!

It was definitely James who drove us there, to go there in '97.

And we came out with

If You Tolerate This. We thought it was a B side.

We went to Rockfield

and the magic dust turned it into our,

you know, biggest number one.

One, two, three, four, five... It's only six chords in the song.

You know, it's a really simple song.

Um, and, like, you know, of course you've got the, like, you know...

# The future teaches you to be alone

# The present to be afraid and cold

# So if I can shoot rabbits, then I can shoot fascists... #

It was the last time we'd ever really committed anything

just to tape without any...

The aid of Pro Tools or the digital morass of stuff

that you have around, new tech, to help make records now.

And it was quite effortless.

But that was the thing about Rockfield.

If something was sounding good, you just didn't mess with it.

# And if you tolerate this

# Then your children will be next

# And if you tolerate this

# Then your children will be next

# Will be next, will be next, will be next... #

Rob Collins, keyboard player. He didn't really speak very much,

but he really drove the band.

Turned up on a Monday and Rob was playing that... This riff.

Turned up on Tuesday, he was still playing this riff.

# Da, doodle-da, da, duh-duh... #

And by the end of the week, he was still playing it and I said,

"You thought about putting any other chords in there, Rob?"

Got to the following week

and a couple of chords to throw in on your riff.

# One to another

# Sister and a brother

# And it's changing the way that you feel

# Pleased to meet you

# Hope I never see you

# I'll be at ease watchin' you sleep

# Watchin' you smile... #

The whole thing just kind of grew and we just played around with

the sounds in the studio and we did a load of overdubs.

# Love, I adore you

# Always lookin' for you... #

We just knew that we had this magic, modern Northern Soul stomper.

You know, just very enthusiastic time

and all of us sort of, like, dancing on

the mixing desk and, you know, crazy times.

We were all taking a lot of drugs at the time. Er...

I can't speak on behalf of everybody in the band, but I was.

Yeah.

Who were the most hedonistic in the band?

Me and Rob.

Rob Collins,

our keyboard player.

We experimented with different ways of...

Of getting deeper into our music.

That was the idea, anyway.

And experiment with each other as well.

You know, as people. We were like human experiments.

You know, Rob would go clubbing quite a lot in Bristol and then come

back and, you know, early hours and then sort of, like, do little bits.

We'd have a song and we'd wake up the next day

and it had become like, you know, an acid house track!

And then, we'd be like, "What the fuck is this?!" You know, and...

And then, bring it back to something else.

What had happened that night? Just, like, ecstasy.

But then, that's pulling and manipulating

and working things out and stretching things,

which I think is an amazing thing, so it was a struggle,

but I don't know, it was pretty good.

Listening to Tellin' Stories now, you know,

it's just the most vibrant-sounding thing.

We did all of it in Rockfield, that album.

Although, to be honest,

we would swap and sort of like go to Monnow Valley

and then come back to Rockfield to do vocals and things like that.

So, you know, Tellin' Stories was the last one that we did there.

But you know, as you know, it kind of all...

You know, it kind of ended there as well.

The first time was so easy, it was really easy.

We were getting on really well.

Whereas the last album, Kingsize, we weren't getting on very well.

It's weird because Rockfield enhances your experience,

so if you're having a great time,

it's just the best place in the world.

And if you're not, then you're just getting on each other's nerves.

Because you are in that...

Pushed together in that place, there's nowhere else to go, really.

The magic goes out of the walls.

Being in a residential studio, it's 24/7.

At the end of the day, it's a very intense relationship within

bands and you're talking with...

About creative people, aren't you?

You know, and with that creativity comes high emotion, shall we say?

And it all gets magnified in a place like this.

The trouble with being in a residential studios

for a long period of time,

they start off all great friends,

and, eventually, it starts to get a bit edgy.

Bands are either the type that do this or they fall apart.

A bit like families, isn't it?

Cos I don't play any instruments, you know what I mean?

And a lot of the... All the rest of the band play an instrument.

I sort of do my singing and I'd be sort of bored,

do you know what I mean?

So then I'd be sort of just going and twiddling my thumbs

and I'd think, "I'm fucking going to the boozer,"

so I'd be in the pub most of the time with whoever.

So then I'd bring a few people back and I think that's when...

I think that's when it all went a bit tits up with me and Noel

because I think...

I don't know where he'd gone, somewhere, but like loads of

people come back and started looking at his guitars and shit

and you're not allowed to look at his guitars.

And it all went a bit...

Yeah, had a little argument and then that was it.

I think we had a little bit of a...

It was a proper fight. Proper brawl.

Yeah, cricket bats and air rifles and... Dustbins.

Noel might have used the cricket bat to hit me,

or just wave it at my head. I don't remember much, but...

We had air rifles. We locked them up. Yeah.

They got locked up cos they might have got used.

There was just a lot of running around and fucking throwing shit

at people and I just remember him getting in the car and driving off

and I was stood there like a fucking wild bastard, just going,

"Come on, you fucking shitbag!"

Didn't you throw a dustbin at the car, or something? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I might have, yeah.

As it was flying up the drive, yeah. Yeah, I should have... Yeah.

Just little things, but them little things are just little.

You know what I mean? It's the craic, innit?

Was that one of the biggest fights you ever had with Noel?

Probably, yeah. It was one of them. But... It was a proper one.

As fights went, it was a good one.

It was carnage!

You know, some things got broken, some...

I mean, here, I didn't really know what to make of all that

cos it was the first time I'd kind of seen something like that.

I wasn't used to it.

But everybody here seemed to take it in their stride, you know.

I think they'd seen it all before, so nothing was going to shock them.

So, yeah, they just cleaned it up the next day

and it was like nothing had happened.

Yeah, I think Noel went home.

He's always been a bit like that, you know what I mean?

"What are you doing, bringing people back when we're working?"

And I get it, you know what I mean?

But my argument would be, "What you doing fucking taking 900

"takes to fucking do one guitar riff

"when you should be in the fuckin pub with me?!"

Do you know what I mean? Entertaining me!

Were you close at that stage? Yeah, super close. We're all close. Yeah.

Not as... We weren't like Bros or anything.

We weren't fucking like... Like fucking Jedward, do you know

what I mean? Jedward! You know what I mean? We weren't like...

We'd just go, "All right." And he'd go, "All right,"

and then that would be it, know what I mean?

That was the story of the band's life really.

It'd sort of be good one minute and then it'd be chaotic the next.

Until the poor lad had enough one night in Paris.

And then he took his bottle home.

And that was when you split? That was when we split, yeah.

But is the same stuff that was between you

that caused the arguments, the same stuff that made it also good?

Yeah. We were bang into it 24/7.

We were also, which is our downfall...

We were also into fucking the other side of it as well.

The party side of it, you know what I mean?

Like, all these bands that sit there

and go, "Yeah, we're fucking great." Yeah, you're great.

You were shit at getting off your box though, weren't you?

So, youse lot can go. You know what I mean?

We were good at being in the studio and we were also good at

being in the pub, you know what I mean?

And I'm proud of that, as much as I am of the great vocals

and the fucking takes in the studio, you know what I mean?

We were fucking into the whole thing, man.

# How many special people change?

# How many lives are living strange?

# Where were you while we were getting high? #

We were walking and talking in a certain manner and singing

and whatever and playing in a certain manner

that it had to go off, you know what I mean?

The music went with what we were saying.

Had swagger, you know what I mean?

# Someday you will find me

# Caught beneath the landslide... #

I felt we enjoyed the life, you know what I mean?

Can you hear that in the record, do you think? I think so, yeah.

Definitely. There's a happy vibe on that album, I think.

It's all... You know what? It's all a bit of a blur, really. Um...

We'd been to one of the...

One of the pubs in the town.

It was the furthest one

from Monnow Valley.

There'd been a bit of an argument over, um, one of the guys who

was doing some extra mixing on the record.

We'd had a bit of a barney with Rob about it.

I said, "Come on, let's go. Let's get out of here.

"Let's go," and you know, it was fine.

Rob had a half a lager and he was playing the bandit all night,

which was what he liked to do.

So, me and Mark went back. Rob was driving behind us.

From Monmouth town, it's quite like windy roads.

Lots of hedges and lots of corners and stuff like that, lots of fields.

And he was speeding up and he was kind of, you know, being crazy,

like something in a film.

And then all of a sudden, just disappeared.

We all thought that he'd taken a detour

to go and get some supplies, or something.

You know, and didn't really think much about it at all.

Maybe about 45 minutes went by and the police came round.

And said that you should get yourself to Abergavenny Hospital.

And that's when I thought, "Oh, what's he done?

"What's he done now?"

And me and Mark went to the hospital and...

..I heard it on the radio.

It was just going through my head, the lyrics,

every lyric that was in it, it was just like, you know,

"One to another, sister and a brother,

"changing the way that you..."

You know, it just kind of felt like it was... I just knew that...

I knew what I was going to face when we got there.

We knew The Charlatans. We knew them pretty well.

And I do remember just one night and I was here, happened to be

staying here, and you can hear the main road and I just heard

this car driving incredibly fast

down the road, and then you heard sort of the du-du-du-duh of

them going over cat's eyes.

And you thought, "God! He is going at some pace," you know.

"He's driving fast."

And there's a really nasty deceptive bend at the end of our meadow.

And then you heard the crash.

What happened? And he'd... He'd just...

The car, I guess, had gone too fast round the corner

and had gone out of control, turned the car over.

You know, and when we found out that it was Rob...

You know, it was just awful.

You know, Rob... Rob was...

He was the first person who ever put me up, you know.

When I went to see The Charlatans,

he was the first person who put me up

and I stayed at his house

and we'd listen to people's records

and talked about how we were going to change the world.

We talked about all that all the way through,

you know, the times of making records.

And with Tellin' Stories, he's on it, a lot of the recordings,

we tried to keep as much of his stuff intact as we could.

And, yeah, he's always going to be a part of that record,

he's always going to be a part of Rockfield.

He died there, you know.

And, um, he's always going to be part of the Rockfield story.

And I think some of his ashes are scattered there as well.

But, um, you know, he's not gone,

he's just in a different dimension, yeah.

One, two. One, two.

It's good for me.

He's playing tonight.

It's... We...

From those times, you know, we run like little samples and loops

and Rob's been on tour with us since...

Since he died.

Feels quite comforting, you know, when you're playing and...

And, you know, every night that we play,

you know, that they're still playing.

# Pleased to meet you... #

The isolation and the place allowed us to create our own world

and we captured... We captured...

You know, the rooms allowed us to capture that

and I'm forever grateful about that.

I love it. So many amazing memories there, such a positive place.

MUSIC: CORO A BOCCA CHIUSA FROM MADAME BUTTERFLY BY PUCCINI

As I remember, it was 1999.

We had just been students and then after that, we were cleaners a bit.

We had never recorded out of London before.

We'd never really recorded before, to be honest.

We'd done one session a few months before in London,

which hadn't gone so well.

So we were going there, it was kind of a make-or-break session.

I think we knew absolutely nothing about Rockfield

before we went there and, I mean,

I remember sort of vividly when we turned up

when we drove down, it was like a little unmade road

and there was cows.

And I sort of wondered what on earth we were doing there.

So it was our first real dip into a proper recording studio

and we'd heard that The Stone Roses had spent

about two and a half years there

or something like that, or maybe more.

By the time we got to Rockfield, it was like, this is your...

You know, we'd been given kind of six months to get used to

being signed and stuff and then our label were like,

"You've got to kind of make it happen now."

So it was very much like some sort of musical Hogwarts, you know.

We were sent away to figure it out.

We were recording a song called Shiver.

And we went outside to have, like, a breather

and it was just so beautiful outside.

All four of us were outside

and Ken and he was like, "Look up there, lads!

"Look at the stars."

He literally said, "Look at the stars,"

which is the first line of that song

and it was really mindblowing.

We'd been in London for, like, five years,

so we hadn't really seen anything

beyond smog for a while.

So that line was in my head

and then, I was thinking about

how Neil Young sings the word "stars" like,

"Starrs... Starrrs..."

Like he does a sort of bend in it.

So then I went back in to try and do this acoustic.

So...

So a normal tuning...

That isn't it.

Right?

So we had this song called Shiver, which is like this.

Which was like our attempt at a Jeff Buckley song.

And we were recording that.

Anyway, I went back in to sit behind the control desk,

mixing desk, waiting,

and something was wrong with, uh, the machine,

so I was waiting, and I saw...

Then I... Then that chord, I started doing that.

And I started thinking about Neil Young and I was like...

# Stars... #

I was just messing around!

This is really the very humble beginnings.

# For you... #

Then I tried like a... That's a normal chord shape.

But it sounds different in this tuning.

I don't even know what that chord is.

I was just doing that.

Then I got the title from the Yellow Pages,

which was about a 45 degree angle over there.

# They were all... #

I was looking for a word which was like uhhh, ehhh...

Yellow...

So then I thought, "I like this."

So then I went through.

Everyone else was watching football, I think.

And I said, "Guys, what you think about this?"

And they were like, "Yeah, that's OK."

They weren't particularly interested.

And then I went into the bathroom in the living-room area.

And then the chorus came out, uh...

# Your skin

# Oh, yeah, your skin and bones... #

Then I showed them that and they were like, "Yeah, we like that."

And that gave us our lives for...

..for the last 16 years.

CROWD NOISE BUILDS

One, two, three, four.

# Look at the stars

# Look how they shine for you

# Everything you do

# Yeah, they were all yellow... #

What was it about?

What's it about? I don't know.

Just someone awesome.

Was it about someone specific? No.

Most of our songs are about someone or something awesome.

Whether that's a person or a girl or a child or a...

..entity or...a figurative way of speaking about the Earth.

We're always banging on about love and amazingness.

And I think we always will.

# Oh, what a thing to have done

# And it was all yellow... #

I think that session at Rockfield helped us,

uh...kind of solidify who we were

and what we were trying to do as a band.

The sound of our first album really came from Rockfield Studios

and that sort of back-to-basics mentality

that was imposed upon us there.

Well, good songs will always be written all over the place,

but I think what is changing

is that studios are going out of business all over the world,

because of the ease of which you can now record on computers and whatnot,

and also there's not that many people willing

to put a band of four kind of just post-teenagers,

you know, in an expensive studio situation

and let them stay there for a month and see what happens, you know,

not that many record companies are taking risks like that.

Rockfield will always be a part of me,

because we started Black Sabbath there,

I started my solo career there.

I can go and live in Beverly Hills,

but for some reason, I end up back in Rockfield.

It all helped to create what we did.

It's... It's just magic.

I loved...

I loved being in residential studios,

I fucking loved it.

You're a proper band, aren't you, when you're in there?

Who knows, man? I mean, music's done differently now.

I do a lot of my stuff fucking through e-mails, man.

You know, they fucking e-mail you the drums and that these days

and go, "I'll e-mail you the fucking high hat."

In ten years' time, you've got half a tune done.

It's more of an old school vibe.

Where's the vibe of that, you know what I mean?

Well, I'm still struggling on,

trying to make records and write songs.

Where do you do it now?

Up in my loft, yeah.

Well, I can do anything up there that we did in...in Rockfield.

Nowadays, with equipment, you know, for recording,

all you need is a laptop, really.

When you're recording on a computer, you know,

your song can be performed perfectly.

It might take you a good few weeks

tweaking it and fiddling around and stuff,

but it does have the potential for perfection.

But perfection is not always what you want.

You want something that has emotion and feeling.

You have to capture some magic.

And some mystery, you know - magic is mystery as well, you know?

There's often, you know, something...

Maybe The Stone Roses record, there's a lot of mystery about it,

which is why people still listen to it.

Since our times at Rockfield, we've built our own place

kind of to try and give ourselves

that same sort of freedom.

It's not as good as Rockfield, no way,

but I like to make records,

and I'm really passionate about making records.

Charles and Kingsley were passionate about making recording studios,

and making them the best studios in the world.

And they have achieved that.

We were very, very lucky.

But we...

..we turned the recording world upside down.

BASS GUITAR RIFF

PERCUSSION STARTS AND STOPS

# Charming little woman, oh

# Who can set a man to rights?

# Charming little woman, oh

# Who can hoax and coax you too?

# Who can beat you black and blue?

# Who can love you better too?

# Charming little woman, oh. #

I was so excited about being here,

because of mainly Queen, to be honest.

Have you encountered Kingsley and Ann yet?

I have, I've met them.

We met Kingsley yesterday morning,

and he was out riding around on his tractor,

and he was very sort of grumpy

about people coming to sit on the Wonderwall,

and then he rode past in his tractor

and got a massive puncture, pfft, like that!

And, yeah, he's been fabulously grumpy

the whole time we've been here, actually.

Grumpy and also welcoming and full of stories.

We work seven days a week, as we always have done.

We're a leisure-based company today. We do a lot of holiday lets.

We do a lot of masterclasses, our recording.

We're the milking stool.

With a milking stool, it's always on three legs.

If you start on one leg, you fall over.

Two legs, no good. Four legs, you will rock.

But three legs, you're steady, cos you can't rock.

The holiday lets cannot believe their good luck when they come,

because I give them a tour.

There's so amazed at where they are that they can't believe it.

No fighting!

No fighting. Don't have a go at me.

My mum always says the animals are her sanity, you know,

because there is something wonderful

about beginning and ending your day with animals.

Whether that be, you know, feeding the cows first thing in the morning,

letting the chickens out first thing in the morning,

walking the dogs, mucking out the stables.

And then, at the end of the day,

get the horses settled for the night in the stables.

Beginning and ending a day with animals, for me, anyway,

and I think it's the same

for my parents, definitely, and my sister...

I just think that, you know, nature is a leveller,

it's grounding, it centres you.

And I think that's really important somewhere here.

It's about being a part of something way bigger than you.

You're a part of something else, rather than just it.

Very important for rock stars!

Well, you've got to do something with your life.

Never give in, keep going.

The best is yet to come.

# How long has this been going on?

# How long has this been going on?

# Well, if friends with their fancy persuasion

# Don't admit that it's part of a scheme

# But I can't help but have my suspicion

# Cos I ain't quite as dumb as I seem

# And you said you was never intending

# To break up our scene in this way

# But there ain't any use in pretending

# It could happen to us any day

# How long has this been going on? #