024 INTERVIEW Francis in St Tropez


“...it was the hot summer of ’76 and we were hanging out with Jacques Loussier and his trio - who were in


the habit of passing the odd evening with The Rolling Stones in Nice. Yes, you could say it felt pretty good.”


This took the form of sub-contracting for Andrew Stirling, who at the time was bringing affordable mixing to the market with the now warmly remembered Dynamix line. At one point there were 30 staff on the Williams payroll in a former Laker Airways building in rural Cambridgeshire, but innovative product design turned out not to be a particular forte as the company attempted to branch out. “I foolishly thought making my own stuff would be better than making other people’s stuff, but I was no designer,” he admits. This is declared with considerable modesty, given that the Spanner - an audio-triggered panning processor that will bring a smile to many an engineer to this day, plus a few quid to anyone selling one - was an original Francis Williams design. “Bob Clearmountain has three,” he acknowledges, finally.


SOLO ACT Pursue this line of enquiry, and you’ll begin to guess why Williams has carved out such an individual niche, making the most of his natural talents as an entrepreneur. “I’m no Dane Butcher,” he says, citing the CEO and President of Symetrix, a


If you’ve ever watched a TV documentary featuring a man in a space suit driving a Porsche, you’ve already ‘met’ Francis Williams. The circumstances leading to such a vision will become clear throughout this article, but for now just accept that it’s the kind of surreal episode that frequently occurs in his colourful career as he boldly goes where no rep has gone before. ‘Rep’ is accurate, but somehow diminishes the life achievements of a man whom the Russians call the ‘Dark Angel’ of pro audio. His intrepid spirit has redefined markets, broken brand sales records and rewarded him with a few perks such as the house not far from St Tropez where, with typical generosity, he hosts mondo*dr to conduct this interview. There are other properties, notably in Cornwall, but this is a location that befits an entrepreneur with an eye for showbiz and genuine rock ‘n’ roll credentials.


FRENCH CONNECTION Williams has been coming here for some time, ever since his first forays into the audio business. Not far from here is Studio Miraval, once a Continental classic among residential studios and still extant if more popular as a celebrity hideaway than a place to record music. A teenage Williams had met studio pioneer Malcolm Jackson and landed a job at Neve, a useful combination when the newly opening Miraval approached Jackson to source a Neve console. Cue several trips for young Francis to the beautiful south as the studio was commissioned, usually in the company of Neve colleague Sue who would soon become Mrs Sue Williams. “We were 22,” Williams recalls fondly, “we had the company Cortina, we pitched a tent on the beach, it was the hot summer of ’76 and we were hanging out with Jacques Loussier and his trio - who were in the habit of passing the odd evening with The Rolling Stones in Nice. Yes, you could say it felt pretty good.” In and out of studios including The Who’s Ramport in Battersea, Air when it was still on Oxford Street and countless French locations, project engineer Williams represented Neve in the period just before SSL began to challenge the brand for dominance. But with typical fleet of foot he fell in with the Oxfordshire upstart just at the right time. “We went freelance and the first job we did was wiring the loom for the first ever SSL console - serial number 001 or whatever - which we did in a bedroom of Sue’s grandmother’s house in North London,” he recounts. “But there were lots of installations, for companies including MCI, Westlake... it was only a matter of time before we tried our hand at manufacturing ourselves.”


www.mondodr.com


Francis with Olga Kushpitovska and her husband Stas, joint owners of Zinteco, a well-known Ukraine rental company


much-favoured client. “To run your own company like that you’ve got to be a good accountant, a good manager, a good employer, a good designer, a good engineer, good at logistics... it’s an almost impossible collection of skills. That’s why the most successful businesses are often partnerships. It may have been easier in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but in a technocratic age like this it’s nigh on impossible. “Fortunately Sue and I found that we were good at sales. We couldn’t make it, but we could sell it! I then met the UK rep for Carver, which was a consumer brand really but had stumbled into pro audio after Brit Row had bought a ton of their amps. Lovely guy, but how rock ‘n’ roll was he? He actually wore a monocle... Anyway, I’d never really sussed this whole rep thing before, but when I saw what he was doing it made perfect sense. So I became the Carver rep on the pro side, making the most of that Brit Row legacy and keeping it a bit more rock ‘n’ roll. “It’s something of a conundrum. The Americans totally get it. They love the rep concept: you take the risk, you do the travelling, you invest your time... and if you’re successful you’ll make lots of money. If you’re not, you won’t. European companies, on the other hand, are not so certain. You can try to explain that you’ve taken a brand that was doing nothing to millions of dollars in turnover, but they


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