Roy Hay

"It was a Roland CR78 drum machine, and Mikey [Craig] played bass and Roy [Hay] played my little Korg Delta 770 onto one track, because we knew we wouldn't have a lot of tracks to play with, then the first overdub was guitar, just DI'd into the desk, and then there was a lead guitar, with a Roland RE201 Space Echo, and then the lead vocal. On the actual master version of that track, I'd built a noise gate myself which didn't work very well. It chopped the front off everything, and on the master we had the guitar that went 'wha wha wha', which was actually Roy playing through that noise gate."

Another technological development Hay has exploited is the guitar synthesiser, although there are no guitar synths to be heard on Feeling Good About It. Hay was first seen sporting the distinctive Roland GR707 on Culture Club's live outings. Since then the SynthAxe and the Stepp have also attracted his attention.

"I basically used everything you can think of except the Synclavier. I wrote and programmed most of the stuff here on the 9000 and the Studio 440 then transferred all the drum parts to a Fairlight III via a Simmons converter. For one song the basic program was on a Linn, then I had a clap from the Emulator, a bass drum from the Fairlight and a conga from the DX. Which meant I was using the Fairlight as a bass drum."

"I basically used everything you can think of except the Synclavier. I wrote and programmed most of the stuff here on the 9000 and the Studio 440 then transferred all the drum parts to a Fairlight III via a Simmons converter. For one song the basic program was on a Linn, then I had a clap from the Emulator, a bass drum from the Fairlight and a conga from the DX. Which meant I was using the Fairlight as a bass drum."

"I basically used everything you can think of except the Synclavier. I wrote and programmed most of the stuff here on the 9000 and the Studio 440 then transferred all the drum parts to a Fairlight III via a Simmons converter. For one song the basic program was on a Linn, then I had a clap from the Emulator, a bass drum from the Fairlight and a conga from the DX. Which meant I was using the Fairlight as a bass drum."

"I really liked the SynthAxe but I think that, to do it justice, you have to learn to play it properly using the keyboard part as well as the guitar. If I were just a guitarist then I think I'd have had to learn it, but because I'm an adequate keyboard player, I don't need to. I can play all my synthesisers without having to resort to a guitar interface."

In order to retain as much control as possible over the writing and recording of his music, Hay has built the studio that currently surrounds us. The ubiquitous Fairlight is conspicuous by its absence, but the equipment surrounding us would be enough to satisfy the most avid technophiles: racks of keyboards, a 32-input Soundtracs desk, a pair of Fostex B16 eight-track recorders run in sync and a pair of Westlake monitors that dominate the room.

"The first thing I did when I decided I was going to be serious about this record was get this in. It was either B16s or the washing machine in the corner of the room - a 24-track. I know people who actually use B16s to master so it's a pretty good setup. A Commodore 64 actually runs the desk and I'm going to get the Soundtracs SMPTE Interface that runs with the Commodore and reads SMPTE off tape in real time to allow me to mute and edit mutes and so on."

talks about Roy Hay using this amp at 1:45 seconds

Photo of Roy Hay playing a Stratocaster.