“A Kind of Sacred Place”: The Rock-and-Roll Ruins of AIR Studios, Montserrat

Abstract

Between 1979 and 1989, AIR Studios on the Caribbean island of Montserrat was a premier recording destination for a galaxy of top rock-and-roll stars. Forced to close by Hurricane Hugo, the property has suffered further damage from the ongoing eruptions of the Soufrière Hills volcano since 1995. Access is now restricted, but it has nonetheless become a virtual and actual place of tourist pilgrimage. In 2010 archaeologists from the Survey and Landscape Archaeology on Montserrat project (SLAM) surveyed the ruins of AIR Studios, carefully recording the spatial layout of the studio, documenting remnant material culture abandoned at the time of the studio’s closure, and excavating ash-covered pavement slabs inscribed by musicians during the studio’s heyday. Further research revealed that certain elements of the studios had been systematically stripped from the premises after 1989 and, in some cases, have since been reincorporated into other buildings across the island.

As a site of contemporary archaeology, AIR Studios raises several theoretical considerations about the maintenance of ruins, experiences of a doomed place, and the movement and displacement of material objects. Why, for example, is there such interest in maintaining the orderly appearance of a structure that is rapidly succumbing to tropical decay and will probably soon be overwhelmed by volcanic ash flows? Is a trip to AIR Studios so evocative precisely because of its somewhat dangerous location and because a visit involves trespassing? Understanding this place requires consideration of the nostalgic sentiments and collective memories that draw people from around the world directly to AIR Studios. In this chapter, we discuss these and other issues, including the site’s prospects as a heritage site, given its imminent demise.

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Preface

Between 1979 and 1989, AIR Studios on the east Caribbean island of Montserrat was a premier recording destination for a galaxy of Rock-and-Roll stars. Forced to close by Hurricane Hugo, the property has suffered further damage from the ongoing eruptions of the Soufrière Hills volcano over the past 15 years (Fig. 12.1). In 2010 archaeologists from the Survey and Landscape Archaeology on Montserrat project (SLAM) surveyed the ruins of AIR Studios, recording the spatial layout of the studio, documenting remnant material culture abandoned at the time of the studio’s closure, and excavating ash-covered pavement slabs inscribed by musicians during the studio’s heyday. It is our contention in this chapter that, as a site of contemporary archaeology, AIR Studios raises several intriguing and important issues about the maintenance of ruins, experiences of a doomed place, and the movement and displacement of material objects.

Fig. 12.1

AIR Studios (white structure at lower right) threatened by a pyroclastic flow down the Belham River, February 2010 (Photo courtesy of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory)

At the CHAT 2011 conference where this chapter had its birth, our presentation included an accompanying video and musical soundtrack. These components were essential for conveying the importance of the intangible, sensory musical experience that is inextricable from the archaeological significance of AIR Studios. Regrettably, because of the constraints of the traditional print format, much of the force, emotion, and nostalgia contributed by these experiential media are lost in translation. In an attempt to salvage parts of the presentation’s choreography, we include here audio-biographical references to songs recorded at AIR Studios Montserrat, placed at the head of each section and intended to be particularly appropriate to it. We encourage the reader to listen to some of these songs while reading the text: They will, we hope, enliven our discussion of music’s movements, its associated material culture, and its heritage on Montserrat.

The AIR Atmosphere

Audio-Biography: The Police, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” Ghost in the Machine, 1981

In a 1989 documentary that captured one of The Rolling Stones’ recording sessions for their comeback album Steel Wheels, guitarist Keith Richards described the atmosphere of working at AIR Studios on the Caribbean island of Montserrat as an intimate, productive, and isolated creative experience. In comparison to recording in the city among constant social distractions, he observed, “if you’ve got everybody on a little island with nowhere to go, and you’re actually living almost in the studio, then…you get a lot more done, quicker” (Rolling Stones, 2009). His description of living and working at AIR Montserrat conveys not only an accurate sense of the studio’s idyllic setting but also its unconventionally cramped quarters. Spatially, the recording studio was small, measuring only 20 × 25 feet. It was attached to a modest two-story residence with an open floor plan combining dining, kitchen, and ­recreational spaces. A guest wing with three bedrooms, an outbuilding housing two small offices and storage areas, and an inground swimming pool and patio area completed the built environment of the studio compound.

It was not uncommon for living and recording spaces to overlap. Spatial constraints occasionally forced musicians to spill over from the studio into the residential space, as was the case in 1981 during The Police’s recording of their album Ghost in the Machine, when drummer Stewart Copeland set up his expansive drum kit in the living room (BBC, 1981). Similarly, the small recording space effectively abolished any formality in the recording process by eliminating distance between the musicians and sound editors. Evidence of the musicians’ comfortable interactions with this space is perhaps best illustrated by The Police’s music video for their 1981 song “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” filmed inside AIR Studios, which features the memorable scene of Sting dancing across the very expensive sound equipment in the editing room.

For nearly 11 years, AIR was one of the most prolific studios in the world and a premier recording destination. Despite challenging logistical constraints, many of the world’s most famous Rock-and-Roll musicians of the era took up residence at AIR Studios during its operational years (1979–1989). As vocalist Neil Dorfsman of Dire Straits noted, Montserrat “was a great place to hang out and it was very relaxed, so you could focus on what you were doing” (SOS, 2006). In addition to the focus and relaxation that the secluded tropical island offered, AIR Montserrat boasted the most advanced recording technology of the era, including an acclaimed 58-input Neve recording console. These two factors contributed to fostering a creative environment from which some of the defining albums and songs of the 1980s emerged, including The Police’s Ghost in the Machine (1981) and Synchronicity (1982–83), Duran Duran’s Rio (1982), Jimmy Buffett’s Volcano (1979), The Rolling Stones’ Steel Wheels (1989), Elton John’s Too Low for Zero (1983), Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms (1984–1985), and Black Sabbath’s The Eternal Idol (1986). At least 67 albums were recorded in full or in part by internationally famous musicians at AIR Studios Montserrat during the 1980s (see Appendix). The global movement of these songs, the reciprocal power they exerted in shaping a generation of music and listeners, and their impact in defining a legacy of musical history on, and associated with, Montserrat connects multiple scales of attachments to memories, experiences, and material culture associated with the studios. The space and its associated artifacts—not least the music that survives—attest to the archaeological significance of what are now the ruins of Rock-and-Roll’s cultural heritage on the island and beyond.

AIR Studios and Montserrat

Audio-Biography: Jimmy Buffett, “Volcano,” Volcano, 1979

AIR Studios Montserrat was the creation of music producer George Martin (now Sir George), who fell for the island while on vacation there in 1977. Martin had entered the music industry two decades earlier, becoming head of the Parlophone label for EMI in 1960, signing the Beatles two years later, and going on to produce every album they made until the group disbanded in 1970. In the late sixties, he broke away from EMI to form Associated Independent Recordings (AIR), establishing AIR Studios in central London in 1969. But a vacation on Montserrat a few years later gave him the idea of developing a sister studio on the island. As his company later put it, “the island exuded an over-powering sense of peace and amity—all the right ambience for the creation of great music” (GeorgeMartinMusic, 2011). Frustrated by the many distractions in the path of successful recording in major cities, he proceeded to construct AIR Studios Montserrat, which opened in 1979. The procession of rock superstars on Montserrat throughout the 1980s generated valuable income for local island residents and a measure of fame for this remote British Overseas Territory (Fig. 12.2).

Fig. 12.2

The location of Montserrat in the Caribbean (figure by the SLAM Project)

The Rolling Stones’ 1989 Steel Wheels album was among the last to be recorded at AIR Studios. Less than six months later, Category 4 Hurricane Hugo made a direct hit on Montserrat, heavily damaging nearly all of the buildings on this small, ca. 100 km², island (Berke & Beatley, 1997: 82–116). Sir George Martin returned to AIR Studios six weeks after the storm to assess the damage. Opening a piano keyboard, he saw that all of the ivories were covered in green mold and he understood if the inside of the piano looked like that, the studio’s electronics would have fared no better. As Martin confessed in a recent BBC interview, “I realized then we were done” (BBC, 2011). If he entertained any hopes of resuscitating the studios, these were dashed by a second, more permanent, catastrophe, when in July of 1995 the previously dormant Soufrière Hills volcano began eruptions that have continued to the present. Pyroclastic flows and lahars first destroyed and then buried the capital city of Plymouth, blanketing more than half the island in ash and rock and creating a permanently dangerous exclusion zone on the southern end of the island. In addition to the immense disruption of the human population through forced emigration, the eruptions have had a catastrophic effect on the island’s landscape. Over half of the island is designated an uninhabitable exclusion zone, and access to it is strictly policed. Within this zone, nearly all of the island’s previously investigated archaeological sites have been damaged or completely destroyed (Fitzpatrick, 2012; Miles & Munby, 2006; Pulsipher & Goodwin, 2001; Watters & Norton, 2007).

AIR Studios lies on the very edge of the current exclusion zone (Fig. 12.3), and its buildings are now partially covered with ash and hardened mud. It may be only a matter of time before further pyroclastic flows pouring down the Belham River valley either destroy or deeply bury the studios. AIR Studios is likely a doomed place, making an archaeological approach to it necessary—and uniquely challenging.

Fig. 12.3

Location of AIR Studios (square) and other archaeological sites on Montserrat (circles) in relation to the exclusion zone as it existed in 2010 (figure by the SLAM Project)

As a site of contemporary archaeology, AIR Studios falls within the remit of the Survey and Landscape Archaeology on Montserrat project (SLAM), established by John F. Cherry, Krysta Ryzewski, and the Montserrat National Trust in 2009, as a direct response to the damage already caused, and the risks still posed by volcanic activity (Ryzewski & Cherry, 2010). Two-thirds of the former population of 13,000 has now left the island permanently, while the remainder has been forced to move to safer areas in the north, where resettlement villages, a new capital town and government center, and a wide variety of infrastructure are under active construction.

Inevitably, the cultural heritage of Montserrat is either being destroyed or under threat from the volcano—and to an unknown extent, since no systematic or comprehensive survey of archaeological resources has ever been undertaken (Cherry, Ryzewski, & Leppard, 2012). This survey is the urgent first-phase goal of SLAM’s fieldwork. AIR Studios Montserrat rightly belongs within this research framework, despite being a site constructed only 33 years ago, with a single decade of active use, and now a grim future. The studios stand out as an important place of memory work for Montserratians, as they grapple with issues of nostalgia and identity rebuilding [Ryzewski & Cherry, 2012; on nostalgia, see Hodge (2009) and Chap. 11]. AIR Studios is known to, and is a source of pride for, all the island’s residents, as well as for the far larger off-island diaspora. Even today, more than two decades after Hurricane Hugo closed it down, the opening of AIR Studios ranks high on the list of key historical facts about Montserrat, on the website of its Tourist Board (VisitMontserrat, 2011).

Archaeology at AIR Studios

Audio-Biography: Climax Blues Band, “Summer Rain,” Real to Reel, 1979

In 2010, a SLAM team surveyed the ruins of the AIR Studios’ recording and residential complex. The contrast between the vibrant video recordings of musicians previously working and playing in these spaces and the current state of silence and utter dereliction was shocking—the door to the recording studio hanging off its hinges and engulfed in tropical overgrowth, many rooms partially flooded, roofs and floors sagging and rotting, the pool full of sludge, and volcanic ash blowing everywhere (Fig. 12.4).

Fig. 12.4

Scenes of dereliction and decay within the former living and administrative areas of AIR Studios, June 2010 (Photos by the SLAM Project)

Recording the layout and current condition of the complex’s spaces, the team first examined the ruins of the house, which is still standing but vacant and covered in a thick coat of volcanic ash. Small finds—clothes hangers, cans of food, bathroom fixtures—in the closets, guest bedrooms, and kitchen are among the only hints of the former inhabitants of the house. These unassuming remains are not illustrative artifacts of this space’s past rock-star heyday; rather, their survival suggests a measure of hope that the AIR complex might nonetheless still have some kind of future.

We subsequently explored the interior spaces of the recording studio and associated production rooms. These areas, located towards the rear of the complex, were dark, flooded, and in a bad state of disrepair. Although most of the studio’s equipment had long since been removed and valuable fittings stripped out, there remained a great deal of moveable material culture scattered in various parts of the buildings. These material vestiges included unspooled reel-to-reel recording tapes, technical manuals, early-style computer floppy disks, paper forms for booking artists or renting time in the recording studio, an empty guitar case, the odd shoe, and so on (Fig. 12.5).

Fig. 12.5

The state of the former recording area at AIR Studios, June 2010 (Photos by the SLAM Project)

The main house sits atop a small hill and faces southward, overlooking the Belham Valley below (see Fig. 12.1). The house is positioned at the end of a winding access road and semicircular driveway. Two wings of the complex extend behind it, out of sight to approaching visitors. The western wing housed the recording studio and production rooms, and the eastern wing was a corridor of guest rooms, typically used to accommodate sound engineers (the musicians generally preferring to reside in nearby villas). An interior manicured courtyard garden was centrally located between the U-shaped space that the building complex creates.

This courtyard is now choked with tropical vegetation, and the ash that has fallen on its sidewalks has been turned by the tropical rains to a hard layer of mud. Locals informed us that beneath the ash was a spot where cement was poured from time to time, allowing recording bands to mark their visit by scratching signatures and messages or pressing handprints into the wet cement. Accounts detail how some of the sidewalk blocks were removed in the early 2000s, at a time when ­volcanic activity was on the rise. Bronze casts were subsequently made from select handprint impressions, including those of Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits) and Paul McCartney; these are now on display in the Montserrat Cultural Centre at Little Bay, a community theater space constructed by Sir George Martin in 2006 (MontserratCulturalCentre, 2012).

In order to determine whether any of these musicians’ inscriptions remained, the SLAM team conducted brief clearance excavations of four contiguous sidewalk segments that ran from the exit of the main house northward along the guest-wing corridor. All of them revealed messages, names, and handprints of former musicians. Two sections were very well preserved, and two were badly weathered but showed traces of graffiti (Fig. 12.6). The best-preserved inscriptions belong to the bands America and the Climax Blues Band (the very first group to produce an album at AIR Studios). All of the inscriptions were carefully recorded, photographed, and videoed. We designated the AIR Studios complex with an official site number, which ensured that it is recorded in the files of the Montserrat National Trust as a significant archaeological site.

Fig. 12.6

Clearing by SLAM of inscribed paving slabs bearing the names of bands and supporting technical crew members, AIR Studios, June 2010 (Photos by the SLAM Project)

All of these remains are of obvious significance for those with an interest in rock music history and for those who remember AIR Studios Montserrat. In our opinion, some of the most salient remains at AIR are the graffiti on sidewalks, outdated computer manuals, analog sound equipment, vinyl record labels, microphone stands, and abandoned recording spaces—artifacts of the technologies and personal experiences of making music there in the 1980s. These are unconventional archaeological remains, though whether or not they are worth preserving is a topic likely to generate debate among local agencies, music fans, and professional archaeologists. Graves-Brown and Schofield (2011) encountered just such a reaction following their recent publication documenting the cultural and archaeological significance of graffiti drawn by the Sex Pistols, uncovered during renovations of a flat on Denmark Street in London. Viewed as artifacts of “anti-heritage,” Graves-Brown and Schofield discussed the obscene and relatively recent graffiti messages as atypical of the types of sites or remains that heritage agencies work to preserve, but they nonetheless advocated their preservation as a potential benefit for future generations. We regard the surviving evidence from AIR Studios in a similar light: This site is pregnant with meaning and memory and cannot lightly be disregarded, but how it should best be memorialized is no simple question. This remains an ongoing dialogue between the property owner, archaeologists, and various on- and off-island stakeholder communities.

Theoretical and Practical Considerations

Audio-Biography: Dire Straits, “Money for Nothing,” Brothers in Arms, 1985

Our engagement with AIR Studios has raised several theoretical and practical considerations about the maintenance of ruins, experiences of a doomed place, and displacement of material objects. We briefly discuss each of these issues in turn below.

Maintenance

AIR Studios is located near the boundary of the exclusion zone, whose precise location depends on the level of volcanic activity at any given time, and it is thus an inherently dangerous place to visit. The property is private, so that visiting it constitutes trespass, and clear warning signs are posted to indicate that visitors enter at their own risk. Indeed, the state of the ruin is so perilous that it should perhaps be boarded up and fenced, lest unwary tourists injure themselves by falling through a rotten floor or off a sagging balcony.

Nonetheless, Sir George Martin has hired an island resident to serve as occasional custodian of the site; this individual happens to be a member of SLAM, and it was he who secured permissions for our work on the property. By these means, we have also been able to access Martin’s thinking about the site and its future. For example, a budget for 2011 detailed cleanup and safety work that included clearing the exterior driveway to present a more “cared-for” exterior, to board up entry points and affix warning signs, to replace the dilapidated external door to the recording studio in order to “discourage uninvited exploration of the studio spaces,” and so on.

While the monetary sums provided for these annual works are quite modest (5,000 East Caribbean dollars), the intention is unmistakable: “to clear the debris from areas that might be accessed by visitors/tourists, to create safe walkways, and an impression of care and attention.” Why does Martin continue to spend money in maintaining the purely fictive, orderly appearance of a structure that is rapidly succumbing to irreversible tropical decay and that will quite possibly soon be overwhelmed by volcanic ash flows? The situation speaks to his strong personal nostalgic connection to this place and its time, and yet this is seemingly contradicted by his own stoically philosophical words in a recent television documentary: “It’s like everything in life: everything has a period. You bring something out of nothing, and it always goes back to nothing again” (BBC, 2011). This view indexes a larger, equally philosophical question of direct relevance to archaeology: In what sense can (or should) AIR Studios be treated as a heritage site, given its imminent demise?

Movement

AIR Studios is a place that has experienced movement through displacement, both in and out. At the most obvious level, there has been the inflow of world-famous rock-stars to the studios over the course of a decade and the outflow of all the albums and music they recorded there. But, interestingly, there has also been a displacement of material culture objects since the studios were abandoned, an outflow that itself speaks powerfully to their salience as now-empowered things (see Chap. 14).

Since the studios were abandoned in 1989, various private individuals on, and visitors to, Montserrat have come into possession of items formerly in use at AIR Studios, and they curate them with studied care—precisely because of their direct connection to the studio’s powerful memories. For example, the original wooden bar at AIR Studios was stripped out and reinstalled in the popular beachside Soca bar at Little Bay in the north of the island (Fig. 12.7): “Drink at the bar of the stars” reads its publicity, and there are plaques to remind drinkers of the heritage on which they rest their elbows (Soca Cabana, 2012). Other objects located in the production areas offer the possibility of a finding a “lost” recording; one recent music blog post relates to a discarded reel-to-reel tape taken by a tourist from AIR Studios in 1989—“It can be blank or it can be The Rolling Stones or The Police, who knows? This is a complete mystery!!” (Tape Trail, 2010). Speakers from the editing room are among the most valued remains from the studio among islanders, who have salvaged and reincorporated them into local events, including the annual island-wide New Year’s Day Jump Up parade and weekly street-side DJ concerts (Fig. 12.8).

Fig. 12.7

The repurposed AIR Studios bar at the Soca Cabana bar at Little Bay, Montserrat (Photo by Emanuela Bocancea)

Fig. 12.8

Reuse of AIR Studio speakers in a street festival on Montserrat, March 2007 (Photo by Krysta Ryzewski)

More distant circulations of the studios’ sound technology include the movement of AIR’s high-tech Neve recording console, which was relocated to Los Angeles in 1997, where, oddly enough, artists such as The Rolling Stones put it to use once again. The Neve console was the technological showpiece of AIR Studios, acclaimed by many of the visiting musicians for its superior sound reproduction capabilities. Neil Dorfsman of Dire Straits remembered the Neve console and the studio space in a 2006 interview as “good-sounding, but the main room itself was nothing to write home about. The sound of the studio was the desk [i.e., the Neve]…[it] was so good that anything you put through it just sounded great” (SOS, 2006). That the technological affordances of the console compensated for the fact that AIR Studios was a cramped and fairly minimal facility provides a fascinating case study in the context of sound reproduction and how its associated technologies connect to broader social and technical networks of music making (Graves-Brown, 2009; Sterne, 2003). This selfsame ex-Montserrat Neve console, a historical artifact of sound fidelity, has become yet more interesting because of its continuing use and life history; in 2010 it moved once again, this time to Allaire Studios in the Catskill Mountains of New York, where it is now used by a new generation of pop musicians.

The movement and circulation of material culture from AIR Studios transforms them from a singular site or locus of activity to a distributed network of places. The site location of AIR Studios still exists physically (albeit perhaps only temporarily), but mainly as a new site that is increasingly defined as an assemblage of loss and accumulating ruins. As it continues to be transformed into an abandoned and somewhat inaccessible space and as its materials are removed from it and commemorated or preserved elsewhere, the studios are being progressively reassembled in many new places; in this sense, AIR Studios Montserrat is becoming multi-sited (Ryzewski, 2012).

Heritage Assemblages

Finally, we need to consider why a trip to AIR Studios appears to be so evocative for so many visitors. As already mentioned, the site lies in an exclusion zone, is a private property, and has become a physically dangerous place. Yet, judging from numerous online blogs and other online postings, individuals do regularly visit it, even if in many cases only virtually. To quote from one virtual visitor named Jennifer Boone, “to see the ruins of this place, haunted by the sounds that filled my youth, seems even more appropriate and kind of sacred” (Boone, 2011; emphasis added). This is the language of pilgrimage. Understanding this place clearly requires consideration of the nostalgic sentiments and collective memories that connect and draw people from around the world directly to AIR Studios.

Accumulating Ruins

Audio-Biography: Elton John, “I’m Still Standing,” Too Low for Zero, 1983

In summary, the importance of engaging in a contemporary archaeology at AIR Studios deserves our attention for continued research, but it also has the potential to be a boon for the ongoing redevelopment of cultural heritage on Montserrat. The recording studio, both as a physical place and as a place from which music “moved,” is evocative for the Montserratian people, for visitors to the island, for the musician community who recorded there, and for a global music audience. It is evocative to those who have been to the site, but quite clearly also to those who have not. While the ruins of the studio will be maintained and visitation will doubtless continue, both legally and otherwise, the site will continue to undergo change and materials will be left behind, creating a new archaeological site in itself. In surveying AIR Studios, we have engaged with its visible surface, and, as Rodney Harrison comments, such a surface assemblage is a place where the “past, present and future are combined and still in the process of becoming.” In this sense AIR Studios is a transitional place: It is both “present and future centered” (Harrison, 2011: 6).

By contextualizing AIR Studios in this manner, we can approach its accumulating ruins as a site of both local and global heritage, one that will survive in its empowered material remains, memories, and sounds long after the physical structure’s demise. Tracking the movement of the Studio’s materials, music, and memories is one way to engage with the powerful history of legendary Rock-and-Roll creations, the modern history of the island, and the Montserratian people. It is also one way to understand the strong connections between these local histories and the personal experiences of musical memory and placemaking on a global scale. Despite intense “mixed emotions” about how best to commemorate, salvage, and distribute the studio’s past, the surviving memories and objects are already preserving a future for AIR Studios and Montserrat as a “kind of sacred place.”

Afterword

Audio-Biography: The Rolling Stones, “Mixed Emotions,” Steel Wheels, 1989

We revisited AIR Studios in late June 2012. In a mere two years, the contemporary archaeological record of AIR Studios has been transformed into a ruin of a very different sort than the possible heritage site about which we speculated in this chapter (completed before our 2012 field season). The degree to which the property and its structures have changed since our initial survey is astonishing. In contrast to 2010, when the fairly well-preserved residential area and studio spaces still held potential for renovation and reoccupation, the present state of the property is one of rapidly accelerating and irreversible decay. In 2011, at the request of Sir George Martin, all debris was removed from the interiors of the compound’s rooms, and furniture and shelving in these spaces have also been stripped out—further instances of the movement of material culture from AIR Studios. Such ultimately futile efforts to clean and clear the buildings have left little indication of each room’s past functions and the materiality of living and working in the studios. Adding to these recent losses is the rapid deterioration of the buildings’ infrastructure. Gaping holes now exist in the wooden roofs, termites are causing irreparable damage to walls, floorboards are rotting as rain enters through the roofs, windows and doors are missing, and the courtyard is completely choked with vegetation. Over the next few years, this complex will inexorably be reduced to the shell of a structural ruin, indistinguishable from other abandoned, decaying buildings in Montserrat’s exclusion zone. Nature is reclaiming the studio space, delivering an emphatic final verdict on the viability of AIR Studio’s long-term physical preservation. (An album of images comparing the studios in 2010 and in 2012 is available on the “Archaeology on Montserrat” Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Archaeology-on-Montserrat/137534903036840?ref=ts.)

Appendix. A Partial List of Musicians and the Albums they Recorded at AIR Studios Montserrat, 1979–1989

Date	Artist	Album/sessions
1979
April	America	Silent Letter
May	Jimmy Buffett	Volcano
June	Climax Blues Band	Real to Reel
Oct/Nov	Private Lightning	n/a
December	Roger Daltrey	McVicar
1980
February	Lou Reed	Growing Up In Public
March	Cheap Trick	All Shook Up
	U.F.O.	No Place to Run
	Earth, Wind & Fire	Faces
July	Alan David/Bruce Welch	n/a
December	Nazareth	The Fool Circle
	Sheena Easton	You Could Have Been With Me
1981
January	John Townley	n/a
Feb/Mar	Paul McCartney	Tug of War with Stevie Wonder
April	Mike Batt	n/a
Apr/May	Little River Band	Time Exposure
May/June	Michael Schenker Group	MSG
Jun/July	The Police	Ghost in the Machine
Jul/Aug	Rob de Nijs	80/82
August	Stray Cats	Built for Speed
1982
January	Elton John	Jump Up
Jan/Feb	Duran Duran	Rio
April	Roger Daltrey	Parting Should be Painless (parts)
May	Nazareth	2XS
May/June	Sheena Easton	Madness, Money, and Music
Jul/Aug	Ultravox	Quartet
Sept/Oct	Elton John	Too Low for Zero
December	The Police	Synchronicity
1983
January	The Police	Synchronicity
Feb/Mar	Status Quo	Back to Back
Mar/Apr	James Taylor	That's Why I'm Here
Apr/Jun	I Pooh (Italy)	n/a
Jun/July	Duran Duran	Seven and the Ragged Tiger
Oct/Dec	O.M.D.	Junk Culture
December	Elton John	Breaking Hearts
1984
January	Elton John	Breaking Hearts
Feb/Mar	AIR Supply	AIR Supply
Mar/Apr	Eric Clapton/Phil Collins	Behind the Sun
May	Geoff Emerick	EMI project
September	Luther Vandross	Give Me the Reason
Nov/Dec	Dire Straits	Brothers in Arms
1985
Jan/Feb	Dire Straits	Brothers in Arms
Apr/May	Mike Rutherford	n/a
May/Jun	Rush	Power Windows
Jun/July	Midge Ure	The Gift
Jul/Aug	Tommy Keene	n/a
Aug/Dec	Art Garfunkel	Various
1986
Mar/Apr	Sting	Various
June	Luther Vandross	Any Love
Jul/Aug	Ultravox	U-Vox
August	Boy George Culture Club	From Luxury to Heartache
Sept/Oct	Black Sabbath	Eternal Idol
1987
March	Rush	Hold Your Fire
Apr/May	Indochine (France)	n/a
May/Jul	Sting	Various
Jul/Aug	Deep Purple	The House of Blue Light
Sept/Oct	Takako Okamura	n/a
Nov/Dec	Corey Hart	Young Man Running
1988
Jan/Feb	Corey Hart	Young Man Running
February	Eddie Jobson	n/a
Feb/Mar	Midge Ure	Answers to Nothing
April	Keith Richards	Talk is Cheap
May/Jun	The Fixx	Calm Animals
Jun/July	Simply Red	A New Flame
October	Walt Disney World	n/a
December	Complex (Japan)	n/a
1989
January	Complex (Japan)	n/a
Jan/Mar	Anderson, Wakeman, Bruford, and Howe	Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe
March	Kassav (France)	n/a
Mar/May	Rolling Stones	Steel Wheels sessions
May/Jun	Trance Dance	n/a
July	Ziggy Marley	Various

1. Source: Douglas C. Anderson