That the future sends the past to the margins of history is true at the ISE fair, specifically in pavilion 8, the physical and furthest margin of the mammoth technological fair – open only to professionals – that is being held these days in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat. Where only a handful of the thousands of attendees at the fair arrive, they can see the microphone with which George Martin, the fifth Beatle, spoke to the band in the Abbey Road studio, the amplifier that Jimi Hendrix used in his Isle of Wight concert or part of the sound equipment installed in the Pompeii amphitheater for the legendary concert that Pink Floyd played there in 1972.
Bits of history locked in display cases like palaeontological remains in a natural history museum, bones of the biggest dinosaurs that populated the sound land in the sixties and seventies, patiently assembled by veteran Cheshire sound engineer Chris Hewitt , witness to that era and now guardian of its memory through the CH Vintage Audio exhibition, which brings together around fifty pieces that show the technical side of musical history. Microphones and headphones from the sixties, pioneering modulators used by Stevie Wonder or synthesizers from the first era when electronics fully entered the world of music and transformed it forever.
With purposeful strides, Hewitt proudly displays his collection as he points out unique items such as the DBX160 compressor John Lennon used to record Imagine in his Tittenhurst studio, the drum mics Roger Taylor used in concert of Queen held during Live Aid in 1985, the amplifier of John Entwistle, bassist of The Who, with the tuning for chords written by himself in a corner, or the trolley boxes, the huge suitcases used in great tours, belonging to Eric Clapton and Albert Lee, known as The duck bros. “I have a hundred of these trunks from various artists in my house,” he comments. Almost without pausing, he points to the modulator that Martin Hannett used in the production of Unknown Pleasures, Joy Division’s first album, and a little further on he shows the mixer that Neil Young took on tours with Crazy Horse and Crosby, Stills, Nash
Enrolled in the world of music since the age of 16, Hewitt, who is now 70, has worked behind the scenes with the Grateful Dead or The Kinks, an experience that has allowed him to come into contact with David Gilmour and Nick Mason, guitar and drums of Pink Floyd, to get parts of the sound equipment that the legendary band used on The dark side of the moon tour, in 1973, of which one of the 14 sound blocks that were set up at the concerts is shown and who traveled with the band on their world tours. “People think I have a lot of money, but it’s not true, I spent it all a long time ago”, he explains with a smile as he walks through his collection, which he has undertaken to document through three books in which he collects the history of sound equipment in the last half century, as well as keeping it in good working order. To prove it, turn the volume wheel of four robust gray speakers and the Beatles’ I’m only sleeping starts playing. This is the equipment with which the four from Liverpool recorded almost all of their records in the Abbey Road studios in London, the same audio monitors that can be seen in the film Get back. “Everything you see in the exhibition works, when something new goes bad people just throw it away. But all these things can be fixed”, he says.
In the same good condition is the WEM sound equipment that David Bowie used on the 1973 Ziggy Stardust tour with The Spiders from Mars, and which Hewitt collected from a dusty warehouse, or one of the three mixing desks that were used at the legendary Isle of Wight festival in 1970, which marked the end of the hippy movement. “At that time the mixes were still done on the same stage and not in front, like now”. The music of the Doors, Free, The Who or Jimi Hendrix passed through this device, names that sound distant and a little strange so close to the latest audio technology on display in the next hall 7 of the Fair.
“Technology is nothing without the people who use it, it’s when the two elements come together that you get something truly creative,” recalls Joe Hoskins, head of content at ISE, about a technology still active only three decades ago , before the digital age took it all away. “In 20 years’ time, the devices now on display at the fair could be part of an exhibition like this, it makes you think about how quickly things change”. We will have to wait a while to find out if the equipment that the ISE fair exhibits in this edition have the same durability as those of their predecessors, used by Gilmour, Lennon, Neil Young and company, and above all if they are surrounded by the same magic that the conferred these wizards of music.
