Studio Two

“This is the most famous room. Along with Studio One, this has been here since the opening in 1931. To set the scene, we just walked through a house, and that’s what it was when EMI bought it in 1928. The idea was for it to be the world’s first purpose-built recording studio, which was a

huge deal back then – no one had done it before. They bought 3 Abbey Road, and Studio One was its garden. Studio Two is next door’s garden. It took them three years to build.

“Unlike Studio One and Three, this room hasn’t changed much over the years - they nailed the dark art of acoustics first time round. This was more for swing bands, big bands, smaller chamber ensembles. A lot of comedy records were done here in the early 50s. Then when rock ’n’ roll kicked off in the mid 50s – Cliff Richard and The Shadows, that kind of stuff – this room became known as The Rock ’n’ Roll Room. The Beatles did 90% of their recordings in here, The Hollies, The Zombies. It’s one of those rooms that sounds great whatever you throw at it: an orchestra, drums, vocals, whatever. It’s a nice middle ground between the orchestral sound of Studio One and the smaller Studio Three. A lot of bands come in: we’ve had Florence and the Machine, Lady Gaga, Kanye West, Muse… the list goes on!”

Toying with tech

“When tape machines came in and desks got bigger, they decided to move the control room upstairs. There aren’t many studios split like this – back in the day, the recording engineer and producer stayed up there, the band stayed down here, and the two shall not cross! It was really The Beatles who broke down those boundaries, as they were interested in the tech and what you could do up there in the control room – and with George Martin getting involved down here, it paved the way for the way it’s done today.

“There are so many iconic instruments around! There’s a celeste here that was used on Tubular Bells, Pink Floyd, and more recently Harry Potter.

“Stuart Eltham, one of the first pop engineers here, was trying things out that have never been done before. He wanted a different piano sound, so he got its hammers lacquered to get a hard ‘metallic’ sound, then slightly detuned for a chorusing effect. Those guys were inspirational – the first generation of engineers putting their necks out and risking embarrassment!”