The Radiophonic Workshop saw the sines

While its 1958 founders Daphne Oram and Desmond Briscoe imagined it as an outpost of avant-garde composing, to the wider BBC the Radiophonic Workshop was a source of handy sound effects and music for children’s stories. But as a refuge for musical mavericks like Delia Derbyshire and John Baker, a sound lab filled with the latest room-sized synths, the RW was at the forefront of electronic experimentation throughout most of its existence. Peter Howell and Roger Limb were there from the early ’70s until its demise in the ’90s, and key players in its subsequent rebirth; Peter, a mischievous musician with a string of semi-imaginary psych-folk bands to his name, and Roger, a TV announcer with a teenage musique concrete habit.

Interviewed by Bill, 6.11.2018

How did you each get involved in the Radiophonic Workshop?
Roger Limb: We both arrived in the first half of the ’70s. I landed on the doorstep in 1972; I was there on an attachment, which was a week’s work, and their way of seeing if they liked you. If they did, they’d give you three months. After the three months you might get lucky and get another three months or you might just go back into somewhere else in the BBC, because this was all internal. We were all on the BBC staff. When some vacancies arose again in 1974, I got one of them and Peter followed soon after. I think the person I replaced was David Cain.

Peter Howell: Yeah, I think I got the vacancy caused by John Baker, when he left. I’m not suggesting for a moment that I stepped into his shoes. His shoes are still there, as it were. He was quite unique.

What involvement had you had in studios prior to that? 

PH: Oh lots.

Peter, you were in [highly collectible psych-folk bands] Ithaca and Agincourt. And you had built your own studio at home, right?
PH: Yeah, we did five albums there. We thought they’d be so unpopular that we only had 50 copies pressed, for each of the five albums, but because we’d only pressed that amount they became collectors’ items. That actually enabled me to really get into audio.

Was that the fascination for you, the manipulation of sound rather than composition?
PH: Yeah. Prior to that I’d been in a rather bad Shadows-lookalike band, but with my friend John Ferdinando we got the chance to write the music to a local amateur dramatic production of Alice Through The Looking Glass.

This is in Ditchling in Sussex?
PH: Yeah. That was the first album we produced. And as you can imagine that subject was a gift for manipulation, and we played around with reversing the tape and using telephones to sing through, and I frequently went down to a music shop in Brighton to see if they had another cheap instrument I could buy to make a silly noise with. I think that started my whole interest in the thing.

What about you, Roger?
RL: I too had always been interested in sound. In 1958, the year that the Radiophonic Workshop arrived, I was a 15-year-old schoolboy, and I noticed the school had bought a tape machine to use in the modern languages department, so I begged the French teacher that I could take it home and they let me. I had a microphone and I’d crawl into the piano and bang the strings and record it and put the sustain pedal down and make all sorts of shrieking noises.

But I didn’t really follow it through. Having been at college, I spent a couple of years on the road with various jazz groups and then I applied to join the BBC as a studio manager, and did all sorts of jobs in the BBC for ten years before I arrived at the Workshop. I was a newsreader, a TV link man and all sorts. Then the Workshop thing came along and I got in and was there for 20 years. I did actually write some music for a school play once, but sound manipulation was not a part of it.

When you guys were starting, synthesisers must have been starting to come in and replacing tape manipulation as the primary means of making sounds at the RW.
PH: I wouldn’t actually say they were on the market. That’s probably jumping the gun a bit. There were synthesisers. The VCS3 was very expensive and there weren’t many of them around.

RL: At the time we arrived, yes, but it was a significant moment at the Workshop. It was a changing of the guard really at the RW. Delia [Derbyshire] left, John Baker left, David Cain left. Paddy [Kingsland] had already arrived. And at the same time there was a gradual phasing out of tape cutting. John Baker had done some wonderful work with it that still stands the test of time, and Delia too, but both of them were rather suspicious of synthesisers; they didn’t take naturally to them. That’s how that big changeover came in the mid ’70s.

What was their suspicion founded on?
PH: They were both suspicious, but not necessarily in the same way. John Baker was a fantastic jazz musician, and his compositions when you look at them musically are fascinating, so I think he was suspicious of synthesisers because they had a keyboard stuck to the front of them and to him musicality was not as instantaneous as that. He felt you either had a band of musicians and you added some electronics to it or you worked on the tiny minutiae of it with tiny bits of tape, as he did. Then along comes this thing that’s a bit of an easy option.

He felt it was cheating?
PH: Yeah, it was cheating.

But he certainly wasn’t unique among musicians feeling like that.
PH: No, he wasn’t and it didn’t stop there. When we’d been at the Workshop quite a while, there was a lot of distrust at how we were operating and the fact we were taking work from jobbing musicians. Although theoretically that might be true, if you compare the number of programmes we worked on to the number using BBC broadcasting, it was infinitesimal. Looking back. I don’t think it was as big a deal as they made out, but nevertheless it is true to say there was suspicion.

And what was Delia’s take on it?
PH: She had a very mathematical and almost scientific approach…

RL: Analytical.

PH: Analytical is the word. She liked to approach things where she had decided what she was going to do before she started it, and then along comes something that begs the opposite: which is saying, ‘Find out what I can do!’ And it’s a completely different thing. It was just not her bag, really.

RL: Also, it has to be said that when the VCS3 first arrived it didn’t actually have a keyboard. Although it did have one sewn on to it, it never really worked satisfactorily in a keyboard-y sort of way. It was originally conceived as a sound source rather than as a musical instrument.

PH: It was enormous fun. I came across my first VCS3 in the Cockpit Theatre just north of Paddington [we’re in the Paddington Hilton in Praed Street], where the BBC amateur dramatic group I belonged to the Aerial Theatre Group were doing a performance and one of the things we were doing needed some sort of musical accompaniment and someone said well actually there’s some electronic bits we use for the youth group upstairs and there were two VCS3s sitting there. It was likely to be 1972.

Had you come across electronic music prior to working at the Radiophonic Workshop?
RL: I don’t know if I’d had a serious experience with it, I was certainly interested in contemporary and modern music. I’d been to concerts for Boulez and Messiaen etc.

PH: And there was musique concrete too.

RL: Yes, although I don’t think I’d had a serious musical experience of that.

PH: I’d also listened to a few tracks of Varese.

RL: The one person we haven’t mentioned of course is Stockhausen, who was in the vanguard.

PH: Stands alone really.

So were they influential with members of the Radiophonic Workshop?
PH: It’s funny, people assume they must’ve been important, but it was certainly not the case. I have a background in instrumental guitar music; I’d realised what fun it was to manipulate sounds on tape, so I came in on a purely practical experience-led way. It was selfish in a way because I was in this little bubble and thought, ‘Ooh this is great!’ I said to a friend the other day don’t get the impression I had lots to choose from – I was bloody awful at everything else! I was delighted that I was so enthusiastic about this and I could do it quite well.

RL: Mine was similar. My bubble was playing keyboards and bass, and yours was guitar, and when I found myself at the BBC playing with the equipment, long before I was in the Workshop I discovered all sorts of things about feedback and loops that I discovered myself. I was just discovering the possibilities of a professional studio like that.

PH: I can’t speak for the others, but I know Paddy has a similar background. We didn’t imagine something and investigate it, it really was an experience-led thing.

Similar, I guess, to what Joe Meek was doing.
RL: Well, I actually did work in Joe Meek’s studio in about 1963 or 1964. I was playing with a jazz group at the time. I was going to say I went up to his studio, but in those days everybody did. My experience of him was he was a fairly down to earth bloke. We never got anywhere commercially with him, but he did show us his wonderful machine that he did ‘Telstar’ [by The Tornados] on, and he showed us his bathroom which had a microphone at one end. So it was a little bit of history but I wouldn’t say it left a lasting influence on me. He left an impression on me but not an influence.

PH: There were lot of parallel lines at that time but they weren’t really converging. And then we get into the BBC and if ever there was a hermit-like operation… the BBC was it! It outsources a lot of stuff nowadays, but in those days it was proud of the fact it could do the whole damn thing itself. It had a wardrobe department, it had everything; buildings all over West London. Everything was in-house. There we were, stuck in the middle of this giant bubble, and I’m almost ashamed to say this, but all that time I was in Maida Vale I never once went to Abbey Road Studios!

How far is it?
RL: A 15-minute walk.

PH: We were so heads down because a lot of projects were coming through the door all the time.

How did the work come in, was it generated by the BBC itself?
RL: It was producer-led. The Workshop grew out of BBC radio. They were preparing and inventing all sorts of new psychological dramas. And some of those producers went to TV and they took us with them really.

PH: Also, you’ve got to remember the biggest lucky break we had as a department was getting the credit on the end of a programme. The Radiophonic Workshop name coming up on the end of Dr Who, and it was very cleverly negotiated so it wasn’t just the department name but also the composer who got a credit. And so everyone could see this, including directors inside the BBC: ‘Oh they’ve done this weird stuff, and I need something strange, I’ll go to the Workshop.’

RL: And lots of people came to the Workshop. A lot of people beat a path to our door.

PH: [British experimental Composer] Jonathan Harvey was one…

Marc Bolan was another, wasn’t he?
RL: Well, I was in my studio working away and it was lunchtime so I opened the door to walk out and there was Marc Bolan with his ear to the door. And he said, ‘I’ve always wondered what went on in the Radiophonic Workshop.’ So I gave him my card and said if you want to come back and have a proper visit let me know. Mike Oldfield used to come around. Bolan said thanks very much. Two weeks later he was dead.

When did you realise that the Workshop had had this influence in the wider culture?
PH: Not for absolutely ages. I don’t think the penny actually dropped until [Producer, journalist and Gay Dad frontman] Cliff Jones did a little survey, because he was very interested in managing us as a band, and we’d never given a second thought to that being a possibility. So before he committed himself he asked a researcher to ask around a bit, and she came back and said, ‘Well actually there’s quite a lot of love out there.’

RL: I’m not sure how much influence there has been to be honest. I think it’s more apparent than real, if you know what I mean.

PH: I think people think we had a certain sort of cachet and I think they liked being associated with that.

RL: I don’t think composers would sit down and wonder how the Radiophonic Workshop would approach a score, but they might have unconsciously soaked up a few sounds.

PH: I’ve heard us mentioned in the same sentence as Pink Floyd, and I’ve listened to tons of Pink Floyd and I don’t jump up and down and go, ‘That’s us!’ It sounds like original material and I don’t think for a minute any of it was influenced by us. The rush to find influences is an after-the-event explanation and it’s not really true. I think your remark about parallel lines is much more what it was, and it took many, many years for those ideas to be compared.

RL: Also, it’s worth noting that it was by no means homogenous in the Radiophonic Workshop. Paddy had his style, Peter had his style, I had my style, etc.

How did it work? Did you each have your own studio space?
RL: Peter and I shared a studio for a while though. You came in the morning.

PH: No it was completely the opposite! I’d come in the afternoon and start at 3pm. My wife is still complaining that I still work like that.

How did your 2009 Roundhouse show come about?
In 2002 the Radiophonic Workshop did a concert called ‘Generic Sci-fi Quarry’ in a quarry in Oxfordshire. It was celebrating the fact they used an awful lot of quarries in sci-fi films. It was a playback of original music, over two nights, and they’d hired phenomenal projectors and an incredible sound system. It was a one-off and those people who turned up really enjoyed it, about 800 people.

RL: But in 2009 at the Roundhouse we had a cast of thousands: brass section, session drummer and bass player,

PH: Dave Gaydon from the venue approached us, because he was doing a festival called Short Circuit over four or five nights. We were approached and we thought. ‘Are they mad?’

RL: After that there was a pause, and then we reinvented the group and started doing festivals.

What was it like playing your music in that context?
RL: Well, you’re going to get two completely different answers, but I enjoyed myself immensely. Technically there were things that went wrong but it didn’t bother me particularly.

PH: I didn’t enjoy it. I wasn’t prepared enough. It did give me the motivation to get ready for the next time. I did enjoy bits of it and the audience reaction.

What are some of proudest moments as composers?
RL: It’s like asking which one is your favourite child. There was something I did for ‘Box Of Delights’ that I was quite pleased with. There are some pleasant parts of Dr Who that I’m not ashamed of.

PH: Of the Dr Who stuff I’m most pleased with ‘The Five Doctors’ because I loved the whole idea of that programme.

How much did sci-fi feed into the work you did? Most of my memories of the Radiophonic Workshop were of sci-fi stuff on the BBC.
PH: Not as much as you might think. We worked an enormous amount for radio schools programmes, and they were not science fiction by any means. A lot of them were for quite simple stories, things like Ali Baba’s magic carpet. The first job I did in the RW was a flying steak and kidney pie. That’s not very sci-fi.

RL: One of the things we dealt with at the RW was outer space and inner space. So a lot of the things we dealt with were psychological. Someone once said you should have a sign up saying you specialise in nervous breakdowns because there was a lot of that going on.

Is it true that they tried to limit workers in the department to three-month stints because they thought it was psychologically damaging?
PH: In the early years I believe that was actually true. They were actually suggesting you couldn’t hold down the job for too long.

RL: It might have also come from the fact that John Baker and Delia were wonderfully creative people but not exactly feet-on-the-ground. There’s no doubt that I think they suffered from that.

PH: To call them otherworldly is not to describe them as science fiction; they were just constantly absorbed in other things. That worried a people a little bit.

RL: Delia had a certain mindset to the whole of her life, which was not negative, it was very positive in fact.

PH: Yes she enjoyed her life. She was very bohemian

RL: She was a character with loads and loads of friends. John Baker was a bit more of a loner, I think.

PH: John Baker was the very first person I saw when I went on attachment there. He turned up early for work and hardly anyone else ever did. I went into his room and the first impression was cigarettes. He was a chain smoker and the nicotine hung down like stalactites from the ceiling.

RL: I spent a morning on attachment with him and although he was smiley and friendly it was also really obvious he would much rather be on his own in the studio and I was upsetting his routine.

Tell me about the Delaware [The nickname of the VCS3].
PH: It was a very, very big VCS3.

RL: They were Synthi 100’s really.

PH: Yes, that was its trade name. We called it the Delaware and it was the first one of its type. This is my controversial bit because I guess a lot of fans would say how could you say nasty things about the Delaware, but it had a very thin sound. It could make some lovely sounds and I used it almost like a condiment to add to other stuff. On the very few occasions I used it entirely for something I was never very happy and always felt it sounded a bit thin. And by the time you’d have thought there’d be a son of Delaware things had moved on. The ARP Odyssey was with us, with the fattest bass sound you ever heard.

RL: The Delaware did have the first sequencer I seem to remember.

PH: Yes, and a very large matrix selection programme on it. So in many ways it was very inspirational for lots of synths that came afterwards.

RL: You know how ‘Incubus’ starts? I did that with the Delaware.

PH: Oh really!

What were your favourite compositional tools?
PH: Paddy and I absolutely adored the ARP.

RL: I love it too. It was very much in demand and we only had one. And the Yamaha DX7.

PH: The DX7 was great and it came with a big fanfare, but not as versatile as they made out. This is almost harder than asking about your favourite piece. Although you’re in partnership with these bits of equipment, they did tend to come and go so you’d be using whatever you were excited about using at the time. It was very wrong to say it was the Fairlight, but at the time I did enjoy using it because it did things other machines couldn’t.

Was the Fairlight a quantum leap in terms of composition?
RL: It was the first time we got seriously into the digital recording of sound.

PH: It was the first sampler really.

And it would have coincided with the arrival of MIDI too?
PH Yes, it would, although I’m saying they’re part of the same stream. Again, parallel lines. It had a sampling time of 1.6 seconds, but boy you could do a lot with it when that’s all that was available. One thing it would do is literally morph between waveforms. I had a favourite sample which I’ve still got which is a mandolin and a choir, two almost completely different sounds and the sound of the mandolin pluck literally turns into the choir. I’ve yet to find anything that really does that. Also, the composer page was quite innovative, because there were no bar lines.

RL: One of the most significant moments was when we first started using sequencers – using a Mac with a sequencing program.

What were you using originally, Cubase? Notator?
PH: Performer to start with. Then something called Studio Vision, which was very good but sadly got bought out and discontinued, but now I’m on Logic.

How does it feel to know that the Radiophonic Workshop has had such a profound influence on British youth culture?
RL: I’m pleased to have been part of it really. At the time I could’ve done better but I was enjoying myself.

PH: Sounds like one of my school reports!

RL: I was lucky to be there. When I arrived there in the 1970s, the feeling was this was wonderful and it can’t possibly last.

PH: Yes, you felt like you were going in every day and thinking how can this exist in the BBC?!

RL: Yes but actually, it could only have existed in the BBC, paradoxically!

PH: That’s the paradox.

Was it John Birt that ended it for the RW?
PH: Well John Birt dug the hole. That’s not strictly fair, though everyone absolutely hated the producer choice system he brought in. But I think it would be unfair to blame him for its demise. I think it was natural evolution of the marketplace. When it started we were using things that nobody else had access to, and that’s what made it so mysterious. The only pity was that they didn’t have party and say thank you you’ve done a grand job.

RL: It went out with a whimper. It faded away.

PH: Our fans continued on, as did fans of Dr Who, we disappeared off the scene for nine years and then we came back for the concert and there they all were waiting for us to return.

© Bill Brewster & Frank Broughton