It’s so huge it beggars belief. It’s a musical tragedy...so much history just wiped out
Star on blaze that destroyed master tapes of classic albums – AWB guitarist Hamish Stuart
Afire that destroyed half a million recordings by some of the world’s biggest artists was yesterday branded a “cultural tragedy”.
The full extent of the 2008 fire at Universal Studios in Hollywood is only now emerging, with original master recordings of more than 800 artists lost in the blaze.
They include Scottish stars, the Average White Band and Nazareth.
Universal downplayed the extent of the fire for years and many of the musicians, including Bryan Adams and Sheryl Crow, have only now been told their work has been lost.
The destroyed archive held priceless one-of-a-kind master recordings, some dating back to the 1940s, and included unreleased material that could have been used on box sets and reissues.
Songwriter and guitarist Hamish Stuart, an original member of Average White Band, described the loss from the fire as “unbelievable”.
He said: “The scope of this is so huge it beggars belief. It’s a musical tragedy. So much history just wiped out.”
AWB had massive success in the 1970s with hits including Let’s Go Round Again and the million-selling Pick Up The Pieces, which topped the charts in America.
He said: “I believe we have all the other AWB masters safe but the original 24-track tapes of the album Shine may have gone.
“It would have been nice to remix a couple of tracks but it now looks like an impossible task and small potatoes in the grand scheme of things when you take into account the scale of this cultural tragedy.”
After AWB split in 1983, Stuart spent six years in Sir Paul McCartney’s band and wrote and recorded with soul legends Aretha Franklin, George Benson, Jeffrey Osborne and Chaka Khan.
Original recordings by all four singers were destroyed in the fire.
Stuart, who tours with Ringo Starr later this year, said: “Everything is pretty much in the digital domain now, but some of the digital remasters are so bad, which we discovered with the AWB catalogue about 10 years ago.
“When we remastered our music, we used state of the art equipment and our original engineer Gene Paul. The remasters sound as good as the vinyl.
“But where original tapes are poorly remastered and have been lost, then the music is going to sound rubbish forever. It’s a sad state of affairs. I heard the digital remaster of an Aretha Franklin album – either Aretha Now or Soul ’69 – and it was so tinny sounding. I thought, ‘How could they let that happen?’ The quality control just wasn’t there.”
Soundgarden and estates representing Tupac Shakur and Tom Petty are among those suing Universal Music Group for $100 million.
They allege Universal failed to protect music lost in the fire and inform them of the extent of the damage.
“But it doesn’t bring back the music,” said Stuart. “That’s the important thing.”
Scots rockers Nazareth said they had kept copies of their master tapes.
The band celebrated their 50th anniversary last year with a 39-disc box set.
Founding member and bass player Pete Agnew said: “Because we were with several record companies during our career, we have several copy masters.
“But I was gobsmacked to discover that so much music was stored in one building at Universal. It is devastating that jazz and blues music going back to the 1940s has gone.”