LEGENDARY STUDIO ENGINEER KEN SCOTT ON WORKING WITH THE BEATLES

EVEN 50 YEARS ON, Ken Scott can't really deal with the notion that the music he helped to create has affected millions of lives, has truly changed the world.

Nor can he fathom that many of those life-altered listeners would be curious enough to come hear the legendary record producer/engineer lecture (as Scott's doing Tuesday evening at Drexel University) or read his newly published memoir, Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust (Alfred Music Publishing, $24.99), written with a little help from Bobby Owsinski.

"Back then, we never had the notion this stuff would last," says the 65-year-old Scott, who was the recording-studio helmsman for such talents as the Beatles, David Bowie, Elton John, Pink Floyd, Lou Reed, Jeff Beck, Supertramp, Duran Duran and Philly fusion-master Stanley Clarke.

"Rock was still young back then," Scott said, and so was he. He quit school, got his first gig at London's prestigeous EMI Studios (later renamed Abbey Road Studios, after the location-checking hit album) when he was all of 16.

 

"I wrote a letter asking for a job and miracle on miracles, they responded and made me a studio librarian - collecting, organizing and filing the recordings. I thought I was the luckiest kid in the world."

It was then pretty common for young Brits to leave school "as early as 15," Scott rolls on in our recent chat. But few contemporaries had a grasp of their future as focused as his. Scott had enjoyed early exposure to a Grundig magnetic tape recorder and microphones, and became obsessed by the technology of capturing and manipulating sound.

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