> STUDIO THE DARK LORD
Tales from the da C
Chris Tsanagrides, AKA The Dark Lord, has produced hundreds of acclaimed records for acts such as Gary Moore I think it’s
important to come up with guitar harmonies, melody lines on keyboards, pads or whatever it takes to make a song come alive. I like to think that people will hear something
different every time they listen to it.
hris Tsangarides, known to his friends as CT or The Dark Lord, is a British producer, engineer and writer. He is currently based at his own studio, The Ecology Rooms on the south coast of England, where he works predominantly with heavy rock acts, largely due to his unrivalled reputation for producing this genre. Tsangarides began his career in 1975 as a tape op at Morgan Studios in North London, where he worked alongside bands such as Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy and Judas Priest, overseeing the very first 24-track Apex tape machine in England. More recently, he has made records with Biomechanical, Matt Mays & El Torpedo and Crowning Glory, and is well known for his appearance in the movie Anvil: The Story of Anvil, which won an Emmy in the US. Back in April, Chris Tsangarides was due to be recording an album with a band from Japan, but following the earthquake, he lost contact with all band members. Sometime after the disaster, a heartening email from their manager confirmed that the musicians were all safe, but he found himself with some free time; quite a rare thing for a man with a long line of artists wanting to work with him. Audio Pro took this opportunity to interview the celebrated producer.
You got your first job as a tape op Morgan Studios in ’75 aged 18 and by 21 you had produced Gary Moore’s Back on the Streets. How did you climb the ladder so quick? I was lucky because after a couple of years of watching and learning, I was put on a real cheapo session where they
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couldn’t afford to pay an engineer. It was this funny little single with a Punch and Judy man from Southend, Simon Phillips on drums, Mo Foster playing bass and a singer called Joy Sarney. But the next thing you know the blessed thing was a hit. The producer John Schroeder thought I had a magic formula, so he got me to engineer all sorts of stuff. After a few months of working with him, I knocked on the door of Morgan MD Monty Babson and said: ‘Eh, I’ve been getting paid tuppence ha’penny a week, isn’t time I got thruppence as an engineer?’ Some time later, Gary Moore got a deal with Monty to make a solo album, Back on the Streets, and they put me on it as the engineer. Before we started working, Gary asked me if I wanted to be the producer. I thought he was joking and just laughed and got on with it. We roped in Simon Phillips and Phil Lynott and Brian Downey from Thin Lizzy to record the single Parisienne Walkways, which became a huge hit, as did the album.
Has anyone else had as big an impact on your career? The guys from Judas Priest. Back in 1976 I was a tape op on their record when the engineer got sick but they asked me to stand in and I got my first engineering credit, which kind of set the tone for the music on which I would base my career. A few years later they decided that I should have a go at producing them and we did the album Painkiller, which was absolutely magic: a real seminal album. Even today, kids go apeshit when they learn that it was all played live – there was no sampling or any of that business going on.
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